FLIES. 151 



he has secured the towel, through a pane of glass. 

 Finally, he brings down the chandelier with his stick, 

 just as the fly sweeps victoriously out of the window, 

 and the bald-headed man is left wiping his face un- 

 consciously with the inky towel. This is the final 

 tableau, and, of course, brings down the curtain. 



Now, there is much to be admired in this tale of 

 a fly ; and one can sympathise deeply with the pursuer 

 of the insect race. For an amazing, irritating, temper- 

 destroying fiend of an insect, commend me to the 

 common or household fly. Other insects (which shall 

 be nameless) bite you and cause groaning and lamen- 

 tation, especially in the watches of the night ; others 

 sting you with an honesty of purpose that leaves 

 nothing to be desired ; while others, again, eat your 

 clothes and destroy your furs wholesale. But they are 

 all fairly bearable in their way. It is your wretched 

 fly which possesses a gift of irritating you simply 

 and purely, and of making you get heated and vexed 

 without adequate cause a property this, by-the-way, 

 which I once heard an ungallant and long-suffering 

 husband attribute in perfection to his mother-in-law. 



The one consolation about the fly is that it has an 

 interesting history both personal and retrospective. 

 Thus it is a member of a group of insects to which 

 the learned in insect lore apply the name of Diptera 

 that is, the two-winged order. For the fly wants the 

 hinder pair of wings which most other insects possess, 

 and it shares this character in common with all true 

 flies, whereof the gadflies, mosquitoes, gnats, and so 

 forth are excellent examples. The hinder pair of 

 wings, however, is represented in the flies and appears 

 under the guise of a pair of filaments called " poisers," 



or "halteres." This would seem to show that once 

 n 



