294 



M U S C A. 



These have been long in Britain, and frequently 

 fruited in hothouses lofty enough to allow their full 

 growth. In the West Indies the banana is indis- 

 pensable ; shady walks of them are on every planta- 

 tion, and attached to every house and cottage in 

 Jamaica. As the banana is perennial, and ever 

 throwing up a succession of young stems, some one 

 or other of the plants are yielding fruit the whole year 

 round, and this is very often the chief part of the food 

 of the owner and family. Three dozens of the fruit 

 are sufficient to serve one man a whole week instead 

 of bread, and will support him in warm countries much 

 better. When boiled or roasted they are used in the 

 place of bread, and eaten with fish or salt meat. When 

 ripe, tarts are made of them, or the fruit is sliced and 

 fried with butter, or dried and preserved as a sweet- 

 - meat, or converted into an excellent marmalade. The 

 young shoots are eaten as a delicate vegetable, and 

 the old stems, when shredded or chopped up, are 

 excellent manger-food for cattle. 



The fruits of some species of Heliconia and Urania 

 are also eatable, but they are inferior to the bananas. 

 Musa textilis affords a very valuable flax-like fibre, 

 from which some of the finest India muslins are made. 

 The StretUzia regina, named in honour of queen Char- 

 lotte of England, is a beautiful flowering plant, and 

 much valued. The flowers of all the genera are pen- 

 tandrious, except Urania, which belongs to the sixth 

 class of Linnaean botany. 



MUSCA (Linnaeus). Under this name Linnaeus 

 comprehended a great variety of dipterous insects, 

 which, from the vast accession made to their numbers 

 by modern entomologists, and by the more precise 

 investigation of their characters, it has been found 

 necessary to separate into several families, and a 

 vast number of genera ; of these the greater part 

 compose the family Muscidts of Leach, or the tribe 

 Muscidcs of Latreille, which are characterised by 

 having the proboscis membranaceous, of moderate 

 size, and terminated by two fleshy lips generally 

 furnished with a pair of palpi, and capable of being 

 withdrawn into the oral cavity ; the antennae are ter- 

 minated by a large, often triangular-shaped, joint, 

 having a ba .1 or lateral bristle ; the wings are pro- 

 vided with but few nervures. The works of Meigen, 

 Fabricius, Fallen, and especially Macquart and Robi- 

 neau des Voidy, must be consulted for a knowledge 

 of the great number of species and genera of which 

 this group is composed, and of which some idea may 

 be obtained from the fact that the work of the last- 

 named author extends to about 800 quarto pages, 

 and comprises technical descriptions of a portion only 

 of these insects, and in the work of Meigen, upon the 

 European species alone, the genus Tachina comprises 

 3 1.5 species, and that of Anthomyia 230. 



These insects are best typified by the common 

 domestic fly, the blow-fly, bluebottle-fly, &c. These 

 insects frequent houses, outhouses, woods, hedges, 

 ditches, ways, water-courses : in fact they may be said 

 to be found everywhere. They fly with lightness 

 and rapidity, and make a buzzing noise whilst on the 

 wing. Many species are exceedingly troublesome, 

 especially those which frequent our houses ; they are 

 found abundantly throughout the summer, and espe- 

 cially in July and August; they alight upon all sorts 

 of food, especially sugar and sweetened materials, 

 which they much prefer, and which they sip with 

 aviditv. 



Busy, curious, thirsty fiy, 

 Drink with me, atid drink as I, 



is a distich too well known from childhood to rentier 

 it necessary for us to remind the reader of the appa- 

 rent delight which flies have in sipping up a drop of 

 spilled wine ; but the fly is equally able to sip up a bit 

 of sugar, which it effects by first moistening it. Many 

 species delight in decaying vegetable or animal mat- 

 ter ; indeed they may be considered as commencing 

 the work of scavengers, by depositing their eggs or 

 young upon matter just on the point of "trnning" or 

 becoming putrid. Of their powers in this respect 

 some idea may be obtained from the statement of 

 Linnaeus, that three flesh-flies will devour a dead 

 carcass as soon as a lion. Of course, the progeny of 

 the flies and their great powers of multiplication must 

 be taken into the consideration. 



Amongst these insects the Mttsca (Anthomyia) 

 mcteorica is one of the most annoying ; it is this spe- 

 cies which appears about the middle of summer flying 

 in swarms about the heads of horses and cows, and 

 endeavouring to creep into their eyes and ears, in 

 order to feast upon the humours secreted by those 

 organs, not only in the quadrupeds above mentioned, 

 but also of man himself. The M. domestica is another 

 exceedingly abundant species frequenting our houses, 

 but there are many distinct species which have pre- 

 cisely similar habits, and which it requires some 

 examination to distinguish from the common species. 

 Certain species of house-flies indeed seem to frequent 

 particular localities, for during the present summer 

 and autumn (1836) we have been examining these 

 insects rather attentively, and have not yet seen a 

 single stomoxys in our study, whereas on paying a 

 visit to a friend at the commencement of this month 

 ('September), at some distance from the metropolis, 

 we found the stomoxys swarming in his apartments. 

 Our recent investigations have been conducted with 

 a view to clear np an inquiry proposed to us by Dr. 

 Thaddeus W. Harris, librarian of Harwarden Univer- 

 sity, United States, as to the specific identity of the 

 i domestic flies of Europe and America. We have, it 

 ; is true, not yet been able to ascertain this point; but 

 from observations communicated to us by Mr. R. H. 

 Lewis, M. E. S., relative to the swarms of house-flies 

 on board the vessel in which he sailed recently to 

 New South Wales, which bred in the ship, it is evi- 

 dent that America may have been as practicably 

 tenanted by our domestic fly as by the hive-bee, 

 which is noV completely domesticated there. There 

 is, however, scarcely any other insect which could be 

 mentioned which more strikingly exhibits our igno- 

 rance of the habits of even the most common insects 

 than the house-fly. We know its general form, and 

 that it is exceedingly abundant, but beyond this our 

 knowledge can scarcely be said to extend. 



We have already, in the articles upon the BLUE- 

 BOTTLE and BLOW-FLY, given an account of two of 

 the most common, but not the least interesting, spe- 

 cies of the present family ; and in the article DIP- 

 TERA we have noticed the question which has excited 

 so much attention amongst philosophers as to the 

 means whereby the fly is able to walk upon glass in a 

 perpendicular position, or even with its back down- 

 wards. 



The larvae of the Muscides (whereof we have given 

 a representation, in the article INSECT, p. 835, 

 fig. 19) are thick, fleshy, cylindric, attenuated towards 

 the head, and truncated at the other extremity of the 



