CHAPTER XXIV 

 DADDY-LONG-LEGS 



IN early September, golf links and other such grass- 

 lands swarm with a large gnat-like fly of reddish- 

 brown body, feeble flight, and long, straggling legs. 

 These flies are generally called " Daddy-Long- Legs," or, 

 by the more learned, " Crane-flies." I find that they 

 are sometimes confused with another fly of about the 

 same size with bright reddish-brown body, which is very 

 much less abundant and occasionally flutters around the 

 lamps and candles in a country house when the windows 

 are open in the evening. This second kind of fly has a 

 formidable black-coloured sting, which it shoots out from 

 the end of its tail when handled ; it has also two pairs 

 of wings, and is an Ichneumon-fly, one of the Hymenop- 

 tera, the order of insects to which bees, wasps, ants, and 

 gall-flies belong. Our daddy-long-legs has no sting, 

 though the female has a sharply pointed tail. It has 

 only one pair of wings, and belongs to the order Diptera, 

 or tway-wing flies, in which our house-fly and bluebottle, 

 horse-flies, tsetse-flies, gnats, and midges of vast number 

 and variety are classified. They none of them have tail 

 " stings," though the tail may be elongated and pointed. 



Though the two-winged flies or Diptera have only 

 two wings well grown and of full size, the second or 



hinder pair of wings which other insects possess of full 



216 



