FLIES. 411 
FLIES. 
PROF. OTTO LUGGER, ST. ANTHONY PARK. 
Your active secretary gave mea rather peculiar text fora paper. 
I do not quite understand why he should have selected such a theme, 
as he assuredly knows that “there are no flies on” Minnesota horti- 
culturists! Or did he perhaps mean to indicate that they are con- 
stantly on the fly, meeting here and there in our beautifulstate. But 
whatever were his reasons, I will try to give you the true history, 
habits, diseases and other troubles of our great tormentor, the house 
fly. Perhaps, such a paper should have been read at a time when 
the supply of flies exceeded the demand for them, and not now, when, 
as the commercial papers have it, the market in flies is dull. To 
study flies we should have them about, so that they could be seen, 
heard and felt, as lessons are only well learned by studying the ob- 
jects themselves. 
The history of the common house-fly has been studied thoroughly 
but quite recently. The memoirs of the Swedish Count, DeGeer, 
published a little over one hundred years ago, contain the first no- 
tice of this interesting insect, while a fuller account was given in an 
obscure book by Bouché, a German entomologist, published in 1834. 
Both accounts are far from thorough. Dr. A. T. Packard published 
his prize essay upon this insect in 1874; this being the first real sci- 
entific work uponit. About the same time the question came up: 
Is our fly identical with the house-fly of Europe? Strange to say, 
when this question arose in mid-winter, all our museums were ran- 
sacked for specimens for comparison, and to their great disgust it 
was discovered that not a single fly could be found in any American 
collection of insects. There was a corner in flies—perhaps the first 
and last time in history. Later material was not lacking,as Dr. 
Packard could not find any difference between house-flies from dif- 
ferent countries. 
How long this fly has been living in this country there are no data 
to show, and it may have been a passenger on the Mayflower, or 
buzzed in the cabin of Captain John Smith’s vessel, or even per- 
formed its measured flight near the ceilings in the ancient town of 
Pemaquid. At all events, the house-fly is one of the earliest settlers 
and is entitled to the liberty it takes every summer with the upper 
Four Hundred of New York. Perhaps, it may have been here before 
America was discovered, or, when Christopher Columbus wiped his 
brow upon landing on our shores, it was ready to settle upon his 
nose. The fly is impudent enough to have done so, though our his- 
tory has not thrown light upon this subject. 
During the month of August the house-fly is particularly abun- 
dant, and especially so in the neighborhood of stables. On placing 
a fly ina glass bottle she laid, between 6 p. m. Aug. 12, and 8 a. m. 
next morning, 120 eggs. They were deposited irregularly in stacks, 
lying loose in two piles at the bottom of the bottle. At8 a.m. of 
Aug. 14, several were found hatched out and crawling about. The 
egg of the house-fly is Jong, cylindrical and a little smaller at the 
anterior end than at the other. It is .04 to .05 of an inch long, and. 
