DIPTERA. 



73 



The thorax is dark blue and very brilliant, with reflections of purple, 

 as is also the abdomen. The wings are transparent, and have rather 

 the appearance of being smoked ; their margins, as well as the feet, 

 are black. 



This beautiful insect is an assassin. M. Coquerel has informed 

 us that it sometmies occasions the death of those wretched convicts 

 whom human justice has transported to the distant penitentiary of 

 Cayenne. 



^ When one of these degraded beings, who live in a state of sordid 

 filth, goes to sleep, a prey to intoxication, it happens sometimes that 

 this fly gets into his mouth and nostrils ; it lays its eggs there, and 

 when they are changed into larvae, the death of the victim generally 

 follows. ''^ 



These larvae are of an opaque white colour, a little over half an 

 inch in length, and have eleven segments. They are lodged in the 

 interior of the nasal orifices and the frontal sinuses, and their mouths 

 are armed with two very sharp horny mandibles. They have been 

 known to reach the ball of the eye, and to gangrene the eyelids. 

 They enter the mouth, corrode and devour the gums and the 

 entrance of the throat, so as to transform those parts into a mass 

 of putrid flesh, a heap of corruption. 



Let us turn away from this horrible description, and observe that 

 this hominivorous fly is not, properly speaking, a parasite of man, as 

 it only attacks him accidentally, as it would attack any animal that 

 I was in a daily state of uncleanliness. 



I In many works on medicine may be found mentioned a circum- 



stance which occurred twenty years ago, at the surgery of M. J. 

 ; Cloquet. The story is perhaps not very agreeable, but is so inte- 

 j resting as regards the subject with which we are occupied, that we 

 think it ought to be repeated here. One day a poor wretch, half 

 dead, was brought to the Hotel-Dieu. He was a beggar, who, 

 I having some tainted meat in his wallet, had gone to sleep in the sun 

 under a tree. He must have slept long, as the flies had time enough 

 \ to deposit their eggs on the tainted meat, and the larvae time enough 

 5 to be hatched, and to devour the beggar's meat. It seems that the 

 j larv^ enjoyed the repast, for they passed from the dead meat to the 

 j living flesh, and after devouring the meat they commenced to eat the 



* *' The majority of convicts attacked by the Lucilia hominivorax,^'' says M. F. 

 Bouyer, captain of the frigate, in " Un Voyage a la Guyane Fran^aise," "have 

 succumbed, despite the assistance of science. Cures have been the exception : in 

 a dozen cases three or four are reported." — Tour du Monde, 1866, \er Semestre, 

 p. 318. 



