1884. J 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



153 



more for fertilizing the soil to plow under, 

 and it will pay to turn it under as soon as can 

 lie done, while it retains its moisture and the 

 juices stored in it. Such stubble is quite an 

 important factor for the next crop, whereas 

 an old and driod-up one is comparatively 

 worthless.— /t'!(7-a;jVi?u; Yorl-n: 



A CHAPTER ON FLIES. 

 The subject of flies becomes of vast amount 

 to a Pharaoh, whose ears are dinned with the 

 buzz of myriad winged plagues, mingled with 

 angry cries from malcontent and fl^'-pestered 

 subjects ; or to the summer traveler in north- 

 ern lands, where they oppose a stronger bar- 

 rier to his explorations than the loftiest moun- 

 tains or the broadest streams ; or to tlie 

 African pioneer, whose cattle,his main depen- 

 dence, are stung to death by the Tsetze fly ; 

 or the farmer whose eyes on the evening of a 

 warm spring day, after a placid contemplation 

 of Ills growing acres of wheat-blades, sudden- 

 ly detects in dismay clouds of the Wheat- 

 midge ■ and Hessian-fly hovering over their 

 swaying tops. The subject, indeed, bus in 

 sucli cases, a national importance, and a few 

 words regarding the main points in the habits 

 of flies— how they grow, how they do not 

 grow (after assuming the winged state), and 

 how they bite, may be welcome to the readers 

 of the Naturalist. 



The Mosquito will be our first choice. As 

 she leaps oft" from her light bark, the cast 

 chrysalis skin of her early life beneath the 

 w-aters, and sails away in the sunlight, her 

 velvety wings fringed with silken hairs, and 

 her neatly bodiced trim figure (though her 

 nose is rather salient, considering that is is 

 half as long as her entire body), present a 

 beauty and grace of form and movement 

 quite unsurpassed by her dipterous allies. 

 She draws near and softly alights upon the 

 hand of the charmed beholder, subdues her 

 trumpeting notes, folds her wings noiselessly 

 upon her back, daintily sets down one foot 

 after the other, and drives through crushed 

 and bleeding capillaries, shrinking nerves and 

 injured tissues, a many-bladcd lancet of mai-- 

 vellous fineness, of wonderful complexity and 

 fitness. While engorging herself with our 

 blood, we will examine under the microscope 

 the mosquito's mouth. The head is rounded, 

 with the two eyes occupying a large part of 

 the suriace, and nearly meeting on the top of 

 the head. Out of the forehead, so to speak, 

 grow the long, delicate, hairy, antenna;, and 

 just below arises the long beak which consists 

 of the bristle-like maxilla; and mandibles, and 

 the single hair-like labrum, all which five 

 bristle-like organs are laid in the hollowed 

 labium. Thus massed into a single awl-like 

 beak, the mosquito, without any apparent 

 effort, thrusts them into the flesh, and by aid 

 of the sucker-like expansion of the end of the 

 labium, draws in the blood through the chan- 

 nel formed by the five bristles and their 

 sheath. Her hind-body may be seen filling 

 with the red blood, until it cries (luits, and the 

 insect withdraws its sting and flies sluggishly 

 away. In a moment the wounded parts itch 

 slightly, though a very robust person may not 

 notice the irritation, or a more delicate indi- 

 vidual if asleep ; though if weakened by dis- 

 ease, or if stung in a highly vascular and sen- 

 sitive part, such as the eyelid, the bites be- 

 comes really a serious matter. Multiply the 



mosquitoes a thousand fold, and one flees 

 their attacks and avoids their haunts as he 

 would a nest of hornets. Early in spring the 

 larva of the mos(iuito may be found in pools 

 and ditches. It remains at the bottom feed- 

 ing upon decaying matter, thus acting as a 

 scavenger, and in this state doing great bene- 

 fit in clearing swamps of miasms, until it 

 rises to tlie surface for air, which it inhales 

 through a single respiratory tube situated 

 near the tail. When about to transform into 

 the pupa state, it contracts and enlarges an- 

 teriorly near the middle, the larval skin is 

 thrown ofl', and the insect appears in quite a 

 different form. The head and thorax are 

 massed together, the rudiments of the mouth- 

 parts and of the wings and legs being folded 

 upon the breast, and there are two breathing 

 tubes situated upon the back instead of the 

 tail, which ends in two broad paddles; so that 

 it comes to the surfiice head foremost instead 

 of tail first, a position according better with 

 its increased age and experience in pond life. 

 In a few days the pupa skin is cast, the in- 

 sect, availing itself of its old habiliments as a 

 rait upon which to float while its body is dry- 

 ing, grows lighter, and its wings expand for 

 its marriage flight. The males are beautiful, 

 both physically and morally, as they do not 

 bite; their marners are more retiring than 

 those of their stronger minded partners, as 

 they rarely enter our dwellings, and live un- 

 noticed in the woods. They may be easily 

 distinguished from the females by their long 

 maxillary palpi, and their thick, bushy, feath- 

 ered autennse. The female lays her elongated 

 oval eggs in a boat-shaped mass, which floats 

 on the water. A mosquito lives three or four 

 weeks in the water before changing to the 

 adult or winged stage. .Just how many days 

 they live in the latter state we do not know. 

 Our readers will understand then, that all 

 flies, like our mosquito for example, grow 

 while in the larva and pupa state, and after 

 they acquire wings do not grow, so that the 

 small midges are not young mosfiuitoes, but 

 the adult winged forms of an entirely different 

 species and genus of fly, and the myriads of 

 small flies, commonly supposed to be the 

 young of larger flies, are adult forms belong- 

 ing to different species of dift'erent genera, and 

 perhaps of diflerent families of the sub-order 

 of Diptera. The typical species of the genus 

 Culex, to which the mosquito belongs, is 

 Ctdex pipicns, described by Linna;as, and there 

 are already over thirty North American spe- 

 cies of this genus described in various works. 

 The Black fly is even a more formidable 

 pest than the mosquito. In the northern, 

 subarctic regions, it opposes a barrier against 

 travel. The Labrador fisherman spends his 

 summer on the seashore, scarcely daring to 

 penetrate the interior on account of the 

 swarms of these flies. During a summer resi- 

 dence on this coast, we sailed up the Esqui- 

 maux river for six or eight miles, spending a 

 few hours at a house situated on the bank. 

 The day was warm and but little wind blow- 

 ing, and the swarms of black flies were abso- 

 lutely terrific. In vain we frantically waved 

 our net among them, allured by some rare 

 moth ; after making a few desperate charges 

 in tlie face of the thronging pests, we had to 

 retire to the house, where the windows actu- 

 ally swarmed with them; but here they would 



fly in our face, crawl under one's clothes, 

 where tliey even remain and bite in the night. 

 The children in the house were sickly and 

 worn by their unceasing torments ; and the 

 shaggy Newfoundland dogs, whose thick coats 

 would seem to be proof against their bites, 

 ran from tlieir .shelter beneath the bench and 

 dashed into the river, their only retreat. In 

 cloudy weather,unlike tne mosquito, the black 

 fly disappears, only flying when the sun 

 shines. The bite of the black fly is often se- 

 vere, the creature leaving a large clot of blood 

 to mark the scene of its sur;,'ical triumphs. 

 E. T. Cox, of New Harmony, Indiana, has 

 sent us specimens of a much larger fly, whicli 

 Baron Osten Sacken refers to this genus, 

 which is called on the prairies, the Buffalo 

 Gnat, where it is said to bite horses to death. 

 Westwood states that an allied fly (Hhagis 

 Columhaxchensi.i Fabr. ) is one of the greatest 

 scourages of man and beast in Hungary, where 

 it has been known to kill cattle. 



We now come to that terror of our equine 

 friends, the Horse-fly, Gad, or Breeze-fly. In 

 its larval state, some species live in water, 

 and in damp places under atones and pieces 

 of wood, and others in the earth away from 

 water, where they feed on animal, and, pro- 

 bably, on decaying matter. B. D. Walsh found 

 an aquatic larva of this genus, which, within 

 a short time, devoured eleven water snails. 

 Thus at this stage of existence, this fly, often 

 so destructive, even at times killing our 

 horses, is beneficial. We have found a larva 

 which is, probably, a young horse-fly, living 

 in abundance on the under side of the stones 

 in a running brook, at Burkesville Junction, 

 Va. The body was smootli, over two inches 

 in length, and with a few fleshy filaments at 

 the tip. Each segment is enlarged posterior- 

 ly, aiding the creature in moving about. Dur- 

 ing the hotter parts of summer, and when the 

 sun is shining brightly, thou-sands of these 

 horse-flies appear on our marshes and inland 

 prairies. There are many diflerent kinds, 

 over one hundred species of this genus Taba- 

 uus aloue, living in North America. Our 

 most common species is the "Green-head," or 

 Tahamts lineola Fabr. When about to bite, 

 it settles quietly down upon the hand, face or 

 foot, it matters not which, and thrusts its 

 formidable lancet jaws deep into the flesh. 

 Its bite is very painful, as we can testify from 

 personal experience. We were told during 

 the last summer that a horse, which stood 

 fastened to a tree in a field near the marshes 

 at Rowley, Mass., was bitten to death by these 

 green-heads ; and it is known that horses and 

 cattle are occasionally killed by their repeated 

 harassing bites. In cloudy weather they do 

 not fly, and they perish on the cool frosty 

 nights of September. The Timb, or Tsetze- 

 fly, is a species of this group of flies, and while 

 it does not attack man, plagues to death, and 

 is said to poison by its bite, the cattle in cer- 

 tain districts of the interior of Africa, thus 

 almost barring out explorers. On comparing 

 the mouth-parts of the horse-fly, we have all 

 the parts seen in the nioscjuito, but greatly 

 modified. Like the mosquito, the females 

 alone bite, the male horse-fly being harmless 

 and frequenting flowers, living upon their 

 sweets.— vlHierican Naturalist. 



Artichokes are being cultivated more and 

 more every year as food for stock. 



