102 THOSE OTHER ANIMALS. 



the feet of flies are provided with suckers, and that as but 

 few surfaces are sufficiently smooth for the perfect working 

 of these machines, they view a bald head as a delightful 

 place ' of exercise for them, and enjoy the fun exactly as 

 the street boy enjoys the similar sport of attaching a leather 

 sucker to the pavement and pulling at it with a string. 

 The fact that poets view the vagaries of the fly with a 

 mild indulgence will also, by our far-off descendants, be 

 taken as a proof that the poets of the eighteenth and nine- 

 teenth centuries were well-paid and well-to-do persons, 

 living in cool and shaded abodes ; for undoubtedly, al- 

 though the wealthy man who dwells in houses of this 

 kind may view the fly with gentle tolerance, and even with 

 amusement, such is not the light in which it is regarded in 

 the dwellings of the poor. Indeed, it may be said that, 

 with the exceptions named, the fly is invariably regarded 

 as an unmitigated nuisance, rising in many countries to 

 the dignity of a scourge. 



In small numbers in very small numbers it may be 

 admitted that the fly is, as Artemus Ward would have said, 

 an "amoosing little cuss." His restless, and apparently 

 purposeless, circling and dancing in the air, the way in 

 which he is perpetually charging any other of his species 

 who flies near him, the earnestness and perseverance with 

 which he brushes his many-lensed eyes with his forelegs, 

 and arranges his wings, the gravity with which he inspects 

 and tastes the sugar and other articles on the table, the 

 confidence with which he treats all that is yours as his, and 

 the pertinacity with which he insists on committing suicide 

 in the milk jug all these traits are amusing when you do 

 not get too much of them. 



