THE TROUBLES OF THE HOUSE-FLY 183 



runs the gantlet of risks like these, but in Sep- 

 tember and October a new and terrible danger 

 awaits him, and fortunate is he if he escapes in 

 these advanced days of scientific discovery, when 

 so many of our mortal ills are shown to be de- 

 pendent upon the malignity of hovering germs, of 

 microbes, bacteria, and bacilli. 



Let us be thankful we have at least escaped the 

 notice of one of this insidious throng, and are 

 spared the grotesque horror of such a fate as the 

 germ-scourge of flydom. How swift and terrible 

 is its course ! To-day a pert and gladsome inno- 

 cent, sipping on the rim of our dinner-plate ; to- 

 morrow a pale, dry relic of his former self, hanging 

 from the window-pane by its tongue, and enveloped 

 in a white shroud of mould, the victim of a germ 

 or spore. Look where we will upon the window 

 on those September and October days and we see 

 the little smoky cloud with the dangling fly in 

 its midst, and many an apparently modest and 

 considerate fly upon the wall will be found simi- 

 larly fixed to the surface, and surrounded with the 

 white nimbus. 



But the real mischief was done perhaps early in 

 the evening, after our fly had retired for the night. 

 He presumably experienced the first attack of 

 acute dyspepsia he had ever known. In his pro- 

 miscuous feeding he had chanced to imbibe a 

 spore, which once within his vitals began its mur- 



