THE TROUBLES OF THE HOUSE-FLY 183 
runs the gantlet of risks like these, but in Sep- 
tember and October a new and terrible danger 
awaits him, and fortunate is he if he escapes in 
these advanced days of scientific discovery, when 
so many of our mortal ills are shown to be de- 
pendent upon the malignity of hovering germs, of 
microbes, bacteria, and bacilli. 
Let us be thankful we have at least escaped the 
notice of one of this insidious throng, and are 
spared the grotesque horror of such a fate as the 
germ-scourge of flydom. How swift and terrible 
is its course ! To-day a pert and gladsome inno- 
cent, sipping on the rim of our dinner-plate ; to- 
morrow a pale, dry relic of his former self, hanging 
from the window-pane by its tongue, and enveloped 
in a white shroud of mould, the victim of a germ 
or spore. Look where we will upon the window 
on those September and October days and we see 
the little smoky cloud with the dangling fly in 
its midst, and many an apparently modest and 
considerate fly upon the wall will be found simi- 
larly fixed to the surface, and surrounded with the 
white nimbus. 
But the real mischief was done perhaps early in 
the evening, after our fly had retired for the night. 
He presumably experienced the first attack of 
acute dyspepsia he had ever known. In his pro- 
miscuous feeding he had chanced to imbibe a 
spore, which once within his vitals began its mur- 
