118 ELEMENTARY LESSONS ON INSECTS 



Fig. SO.— An adult crane fly. Tipula abdominolis 



maggots;" also tachina-fles, whose larvae live as parasites 

 within the bodies of other insects. Very many such flies 



will be obtained in collect- 

 ing from flowers, for nectar 

 and pollen are attractive 

 food for them. 



Another sort of fly may 

 be found about the live 

 stock in our pastures — 

 biting flies,whose carnivor- 

 ous larvae live in wet soil. 

 There are also long- 

 horned flies (Nematocera), and these are very different. 

 They are mostly long-legged and long-winged, and of a 

 slender build. Most familiar among them are the mosquitoes, 

 midges and craneflies. The antennae are made up of a con- 

 siderable number of similar segments; sometimes, as in the 

 males of mosquitoes and midges, they are formed like 

 bottle-brushes, being densely ringed with long hairs. 



All dipterous larvae lack true legs, but they do not all 

 lack a visible head. The larvae of the long-horns last men- 

 tioned have a well chitinized head capsule, with eyes, an- 

 tennae and jaws that are enough like those of more primitive 

 biting insects to be readily identified » upper and lower lip, 

 with two pairs of jaws moving laterally between. The head 

 is quite free in the larvae of mosquitoes and midges and is 

 retracted into the front of the prothorax in cranefly larvae. 

 Many of these more primitive Diptera are aquatic. 



