290 MUSCID^ — FLIES. 



any connection with our saying of "taking a glass with a 

 Jlij in it ?" 



If Flies die in great numbers in a house, it is believed by 

 the common people to be a sure sign of death to some one 

 in the family occupying it ; if throughout the country, an 

 omen of general pestilence. It is positively asserted that 

 Flies always die before the breaking out of the cholera, and 

 believed that they die of this disease. 



Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, says : " When the Flies 

 bite harder than ordinary, making at the face and eyes of 

 men, they foretell rain or wet weather, from whence Politian 

 hath it : 



Thirsty for blood tlie Fly returns, 

 And with his sLing the skin he burns. 



Perhaps before rain they are most hungry, and therefore, 

 to asswage their hunger, do more diligently seek after their 

 food. This also is to be observed, that a little before a 

 showre or a storme comes, the Flies descend from the upper 

 region of the air to the lowest, and do fly, as it were, on the 

 very surface of the earth. Moreover, if you see them very 

 busie about sweet-meats or unguents, you may know that it 

 will presently be a showre. But if they be in all places 

 many and numerous, and shall so continue long (if Alex- 

 ander Benedict and Johannes Damascenus say true), they 

 foretell a plague or pestilence, because so many of them 

 could not be bred of a little putrefaction of the air."^ Else- 

 where Moufet states: "Neither are Flies begotten of dung 

 only, but of any other filthy matter putrefied by heat in the 

 summer time, and after the same way spoken of before, as 

 Grapaldus and Lonicerus have very well noted." ^ 



Willsford, in his Nature's Secrets, p. 135, says: "Flies in 

 the spring or summer season, if they grow busier or blinder 

 than at other times, or that they are observed to shroud 

 themselves in warm places, expect then quickly to follow 

 either hail, cold storms of rain, or very much wet weather ; 

 and if these little creatures are noted early in autumn to 

 repair into their winter quarters, it presages frosty morn- 

 ings, cold storms, with the approach of hoary winter. 

 Atomes of Flies swarming together, and sporting them- 

 selves in the sunbeams, is a good omen of fair weather."^ 



1 Theatr. Ins., p. 70. Topsel's Hist, of Beasts, p. 944. 



2 Ihid., p. 55. Topsel, p. 938. 



3 Brand's Fop. Antiq., ill. 191. 



