THE HOUSE-FLY 3 



fly. The modern crusade against the house-fly is not 

 based on any such new discovery, as is that against 

 the mosquito gnats, which are the means of spreading 

 zymotic diseases mainly in the tropics. The malignity 

 of the fly is recorded in most ancient history and folk- 

 lore, yet not very long ago there prevailed amongst 

 certain classes opinions very different to those of old 

 as well as to those of the present day. A short anecdote 

 will perhaps amuse as well as explain those misplaced 

 sentiments, which have not quite died out. 



In the middle of the last century there was a boy, 

 thought to be too delicate to be sent to school, who 

 early earned for himself the character of being a strange 

 child. When barely more than nine years old he 

 visited an Aunt who was a veritable exemplar of gen- 

 teel breeding and propriety after the early Victorian 

 pattern. There he was seriously reprimanded for the 

 tl cruelty " of feeding his secret pets, which were garden 

 spiders, with flies which were, so the Aunt said, " poor 

 innocent creatures made by God for a useful purpose," 

 but, she inconsequentially added, " Spiders were 

 horrid." The strange child replied that the Devil 

 made the flies, and that God made the spiders to eat 

 them. The astonished Aunt then elicited the fact that 

 the strange child's father had explained, during a Sunday 

 Bible lesson, that Beelzebub (the Devil) meant Lord- 

 of-flies. 



This strange child was taken a walk over Doncaster 

 Heath by the Aunt's maid. There a dead rabbit was 

 seen from which maggots were crawling, and the maid 

 explained that it \vas fly-blown. Next they both stroked 

 and patted a patient donkey, and the strange child 



