MAGGOTS. 405 



insects are so common in some meadows, that, being very 

 sh}^ and fearful of danger, tliey rise in swarms at every step 

 — some of them flying high, others only skipping over the 

 grass, and others running and using their long legs as the 

 inhabitants of marshy countries use stilts, and employing 

 their wings like the ostrich to aid their limbs. 



These flies deposit their eggs in the earth : sometimes 

 in grass-fields or moist meadows, and sometimes in the 

 tilled ground of gardens and farms. For this purpose the 

 female is provided with an ovipositor well adapted to the 

 operation, consisting of a sort of pincers or forceps of a 

 horny consistence, and sharp at the point. By pressure, as 

 Eeaumur says, the eggs may be extruded from this in the 

 same way as the stone can be easily squeezed out of a ripe 

 cherry, as in the following figure. 



Ovipositor and eggs of the crane-fly (^Tipula). 



The eggs are exceedingly small and black, like grains of 

 gunpowder, and each female lays a good many hundreds. 

 The position which she assumes appears somewhat awkward, 

 for she raises herself perpendicularly on her two hind-legs, 

 using her ovipositor as a point of support, and resting with 

 her fore-legs upon the contiguous herbage. She then 

 thrusts her ovipositor into the ground as far as the first 

 ring of her body, and leaves one or more eggs in the hole ; 

 and next moves onwards to another place, but without 



