Parasites 



also a member of the Fly tribe; she is an 

 Anthrax.^ She has wide wings, spread hori- 

 zontally, half smoked and half transparent. 

 She wears a dress of velvet, like the Bom- 

 bylius, her near neighbour in the official regis- 

 ters; but, though the soft down is similar in 

 fineness, it is very different in colour. Anthrax 

 is Greek for coal. It is a happy denomina- 

 tion, reminding us of the Fly's mourning 

 livery, a coal-black livery with silver tears. 

 The same deep mourning garbs those parasitic 

 Bees, the Crocisas and the Melectae; and these 

 are the only instances known to me of that 

 violent opposition of dead black and white. 



Nowadays, when men interpret everything 

 with glorious assurance, when they explain the 

 Lion's tawny mane as due to the colour of 

 the African desert, attribute the Tiger's dark 

 stripes to the streaks of shadow cast by the 

 bamboos and extricate any number of other 

 magnificent things with the same facility from 

 the mists of the unknown, I should not be 

 sorry to hear what they have to say of the 

 Melecta, the Crocisa and the Anthrax and of 

 the origin of their exceptional costume. 



*Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap, u.— Translator's Note. 

 199 



