FOUR DRONE FLIES WITH A HIVE BEE IN CENTRE. 



THE FLY AND ITS HABITS 



By R. A. STAIG 



Illustrated from Original Photographs by JOHN A. BALLANTYNE 



FLIES have never been favourites. 

 Innate, or accidental, the tiresome 

 ways of the few have earned 

 opprobrium for the whole order ; and so 

 it has come about that the two-winged 

 Fly is commonly regarded rather with 

 aversion than with interest. 



Like other hving things, it arises from 

 an egg — not straightway becoming the 

 perfect winged form, but gradually, by a 

 wonderful creati\'e process of transform- 

 ation, e\'ol\-ing through two transitional 

 beings, both dissimilar, and neither the 

 one nor the other superficially suggestive 

 of the future Fly. 



Very small and seldom seen are the 

 eggs of the Common House Fly ; un- 

 considered trifles, much too minute for 

 average eyesight and rarely found in 

 pleasing places. Were it easy to look 

 within these scul])tured spindles we would 

 see the most deUcate imaginable streak 



of hving matter in a state of ceaseless 

 activity, building up a body ; the astonish- 

 ing foiTnation of a maggot from a mere 

 speck of that marvellous vital substance, 

 protoplasm — and within less than thirty- 

 six hours. Living amid ughness and in 

 obscurity, a strange creation is the white 

 maggot — a hmbless object with a tapering, 

 mobile " neck," almost headless, but 

 possessing a mouth ; well adapted for the 

 particular business of its brief existence, 

 to consume the refuse where it was bom. 

 Five or si.x days is the duration of tliis 

 larval state, then it becomes quiescent 

 and undergoes phenomenal change. 

 Every structure internal is broken down 

 completely. That which was the maggot 

 seems to be again an egg, for within the 

 skin capsule filled with the creamy pro- 

 ducts of destruction nothing reniains of 

 the original organisation save some 

 remnants ; but out of these, and from 



