592 Insects. 



THE HOUSE FLY. (Musca domestica.) 



THIS insect lays its eggs in sinks, dunghills, or any Other 

 place where there is decaying vegetable matter tolerably 

 moist. The larvse, or maggots, are thick and fleshy, with- 

 out legs, but having the mouth furnished with hooks, by 

 means of which they drag themselves along when they 

 wish to move. They go into the pupa state without 

 throwing off the skin of the maggot ; and when the per- 

 fect insect appears, it forces off a kind of cap from one 

 end of the pupa case, in order to make its escape. The 

 Blue Bottle flies (Musca erytlirocephala and Vomitoria) are 

 only too well known from their habit of depositing their 

 eggs upon our meat in summer. In the Flesh fly (Musca 

 or Sarcophaga carnaria) and some allied species, the eggs 

 are hatched within the body of the parent, which thus 

 deposits living larvse upon the decomposing animal 

 matter that constitutes their food. These flies are so 

 prolific and their larvae so voracious that Linnaaus says 

 the progeny of them would devour a horse as quickly as 

 a lion could do it. 



THE GNAT. (Culex pipiens.) 



THIS is an insect which deserves the observation of the 

 naturalist, not only for the very curious conformation of 

 its proboscis (which so quickly and powerfully pene- 

 trates into our skin, and through which it sucks our 

 blood into its body), but also for the several metamor- 

 phoses it undergoes before it arrives at its winged state. 

 The Gnat deposits its eggs upon the surface of stagnant 

 water, and sets them upright one against another, in the 

 form of a small boat : after floating upon the water for 

 eeveral days, as soon as the time of hatching arrives the 



