FLY.] NATURAL HISTORY. 117 



IF any one be anointed with the milk of an ass, all the 

 Fleas in the house will gather together upon him. 



Albertus Magnus, "Of the Wonders of the World." 



Fly and Flesh-fly. 



When the splitting wind 

 Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, 

 And flies fled under shade. 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, i. 3, 51. 



FLIES are unquiet, and importunate, and malicious, sting- 

 ing and worrying. Flies, like bees, if killed in water, 

 sometimes revive after an hour. If Flies be burnt, and 

 smeared with honey on bald places, they produce hair. 



Hortus Sanitatis, bk. iii. ("De Avibus ") 81. 



WHEN thou wilt drive away Flies from any place that 

 there shall none be seen there again, make the image of 

 a Fly in the stone of a ring ; or in a plate of brass or 

 copper, or of tin, make the image of a Fly, of a spider, 

 or of a serpent, the second face of Pisces then ascending. 

 And whiles you are making a graving of them, say : This 

 is the image which doth clean rid all Flies for ever. Then 

 bury the same in the midst of the house, or hang it in 

 any place of the house, (but if thou hast four such plates, 

 and bury them or hang them in four corners of the house, 

 or hide them within the walls, that nobody take them away, 

 it were far better). But this laying of them must be when 

 the first face of Taurus doth ascend, And so no Fly 

 will come in there, nor tarry there. Ptolomy saith that he 

 saw the trial hereof in the house of King Adebarus ; who 

 was very wise, and was marvellous expert in natural magic, 

 in whose palace or place, there was neither Fly nor any 

 other hurting worm. And that I might search it out (saith 

 he), I brought in thither live Flies, which presently died. 



Lupton, "A Thousand Notable Things," bk. ii. 21. 



IN the common place where the Censors of Venice sit, 

 there never enter any Flies. And in the flesh shambles of 

 Toledo in Spain, is not seen but one Fly in all the whole 

 year. And in Westminster Hall, in the timber-work, there 



