no 



INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



blue-bottle, rather longer and more slender, and black, 

 with lighter stripes on the shoulders, is not blue in the 

 abdomen, but grayish black, and all over chequered 

 with squares of a lighter colour. This chequered blow- 

 fly {Sarcophaga caniaria, Meigen) does not even 

 belong to the same genus as the preceding, and differs 

 from it in the remarkable circumstance of hatching 

 its eggs in an abdominal pouch, and instead of eggs 

 depositing maggots upon dead carcasses. The eggs 

 of all the flesh flies are in sultry weather hatched with 

 great rapidity; but in the case of the chequered blow- 

 fly, nature has provided the means of still more rapid 

 destruction for removing the offensive parts of carcasses. 

 The arrangement of the numerous minute larvse in the 

 pouch is very remarkable, and resembles the coil of a 

 watch-spring or a roll of ribbon. R'aumur had the 

 patience and perseverance to uncoil this multitudinous 

 assemblage of flies in embryo, and found it about two 

 inches and a half in length, though the body of the 

 mother-fly herself was only about one-third of an inch, 



A, the cliequered blowfly. B, the abdomen i>f the chequered 

 blow-fly, opened and magmfieil, showing the coil of young larvce. 

 jC, tl>e eoiJ of larva partly unwound. 



