THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 97 



seen in their mothers' arms children at the breast, whose 

 faces were covered by such dense swarms of flies that the 

 insects looked like crawling black masks. 1 All were hard 

 at work with their probosces, the delicate anatomy of 

 which surpasses everything one can imagine. 



With us it is quite an exceptional occurrence for the 

 house-fly to attack man. Nevertheless, the meat-fly some- 

 times mistakes persons sunk in the degrading sleep of 

 drunkenness for dead bodies. When they awake the active 

 offspring of their assailant are already gnawing their palpi- 

 tating flesh, and making their way under the skin of their 

 cheeks and skull : a horrible infliction, which is certain to 

 end fatally. 



But it is especially in our forests and fields that insects 

 leave such lamentable marks of their passage. Their le- 



1 I am not speaking at all hyperbolically here. The children I mention had 

 their faces literally covered with a layer of flies, which only allowed their eyes to 

 be seen. 



Some years ago one of our great surgeons, Jules Cloquet, published an account 

 of a drunken man who, having fallen asleep in the open air near Pans, was car- 

 ried to one of the hospitals in that city with legions of blow-flies developed in his 

 nose and ears, from whence they had hollowed out paths between the skull and 

 the hairy scalp. The irritation and suppuration which they set up speedily oc- 

 casioned the death of this person. A case of death from this cause is also men- 

 tioned by Kirby and Spence. 



In saying that an insect often causes the death of a man, we have only stated 

 a sad truth. The sucking Diptera, such as the gadfly, the fly, and gnat, after 

 sating themselves with the fluids of a corpse in a state of putrefaction attack 

 man, introducing the germs of death by means of their lips tainted with pesti- 

 lential humors. The sting of these insects frequently produces gangrenous 

 affections, and especially malignant pustule, under which the patients succumb. 

 Several cases have been seen in the London hospitals of serious disease from ir- 

 ritation set up by the Musca carnaria. See Diet, des Sc. Me'd., t. xlvi. p. 258. 



