MUSCID^ — FLIES. 295 



riy, which made a solemn circuit round its inventor's head, 

 and then reposed from its fatigue on his arm." — Probably 

 the same automaton, since Regiomontanus and Montroyal 

 are the same. 



Such a Fly as the above is rather extraordinary, yet I 

 have something better to tell — still about a Fly. 



Gervais, Chancellor to the Emperor Otho III., in his 

 book entitled " Otia Imperatoris," informs us that "the sage 

 Yirgilius, Bishop of Naples, made a brass Fly, which he 

 placed on one of the city gates, and that this mechanical 

 Fly, trained like a shepherd's dog, prevented any other fly 

 entering Naples; so much so, that during eight years the 

 meat exposed for sale in the market was never once 

 tainted !"^ 



"Yarro affirmeth," says Pliny, "that the heads of Flies 

 applied fresh to the bald place, is a convenient medicine for 

 the said infirmity and defect. Some use in this case the 

 bloud of flies : others mingle their ashes with the ashes of 

 paper used in old time, or els of nuts; with this proportion, 

 that there be a third part only of the ashes of flies to the 

 rest, and herewith for ten days together rubb the bare 

 places where the hair is gone. Some there be againe, who 

 temper and incorporat togither the said ashes of Flies with 

 the juice of colewort and brest-milke : others take nothing 

 thereto but honey. "^ 



Mucianus, who was thrice consul, carried about him a 

 living Fly, says Pliny, wrapped in a piece of white linen, 

 and strongly asserted that to the use of this expedient he 

 owed his preservation from ophthalmia.^ 



Ferdinand Mendez Pinto says: "In our travels with the 

 ambassador of the King of Bramaa to the Calarainham, we 

 saw in a grot men of a sect of one of their Saints, named 

 Angemacur: these lived in deep holes, made in the mider 

 of the rock, according to the rule of their wretched order, 

 eating nothing but Flies, Ants, Scorpions, and Spiders, 

 with the juice of a certain herb, much like to sorrel."* 



Says Moufet, in his Theater of Insects: "Plutarch, in 

 his Artaxerxes, relates that it was a law amongst a certain 



1 Mem. ofRobt. Iloudin, p. 150. Philad. 1859. 

 "^ Nat. Hist., xxix. 6. Holland's Trans., p. 364. I. 

 ^Ibid., xxviii. 2 (5). 

 * Voy., C. 56, p. 222. Wanley's }Vonders, ii. 3V3. 



