110 



INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



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

 with lig'hter stripes on the shoulders, is not blue in the 

 ubdomen, but greyish black, and all over chequered 

 with squares of a lig-hter colour. This chequered blow- 

 fly {Sarcophaga carnaria, Meigen) does not even 

 belono- 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 ofFensiveparts of carcasses. 

 The arrangement of the numerous minute larvse iu 

 the pouch is very remarkable, and resembles the coil 

 of a watch-spring, or a roll of ribbon. Reaumur 

 had the patience and perseverance to uncoil this mul- 

 titudinous 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- 



A, tlie chequered blow-fly. B, the abdomen of the chequered 

 >low-fly, opened and nja^nified, showing the coil of young larvae. 



C, the coil of lu'vx partly unwound 



