CHAPTER II 



SAPRINI, DERMESTES AND OTHERS 



npWENTY thousand, Reaumur l tells us, 

 * twenty thousand embryos in the body 

 of the Grey Flesh-fly! 2 Twenty thousand! 

 What does she want with this formidable 

 family? With offspring that reproduce 

 themselves several times in a year, does she 

 intend to dominate the world? She would 

 be capable of it. Speaking of the Bluebot- 

 tle, 3 who is far less prolific, Linnaeus 4 al- 

 ready wrote : 



"Three Flies consume the carcase of a 

 Horse as quickly as a Lion could do it." 

 What could not the other accomplish? 



1 Rene Antoine Ferthault de Reaumur (1683-1757), the 

 French physicist and naturalist, inventor of the Reaumur 

 thermometer and author of Memoires pour savoir a 

 I'histoire naturelle des insectes. Translator's Note. 



2 Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, trans- 

 lated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. x. Trans- 

 lator's Note. 



8 Cf. idem: chaps, xiv. to xvi. Translator's Note. 



4 Carolus Linnaeus (Karl von Linne, 1707-1778), the 

 celebrated Swedish botanist and naturalist. Translator's 

 Note. 



34 



