88 THE BREEDING HABITS OF M i'SCA DOMESTICA 



Gleichen (t.c.) found that the eggs hatched ihnw twelve to 

 twenty-four hours after deposition. He reared the larvae in 

 decaying grain where, no doubt, fermentation was taking place ; 

 also in small portions of meat, slices of melon, and in old broth. 

 His observations are extremely interesting, and, excluding mis- 

 takes which were due to the lack of modern apparatus, his 

 account is still a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the 

 subject. Bouche (1834) describes the larvae as living in horse- 

 manure and fowl-dimg, especially when warm. He does not give 

 the time occupied by the earlier developmental stages, but states 

 that the pupal stage lasts from 8 — 14 days. 



Packard (^.c), working at Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.A., found 

 that the larvae emerge from the eggs twenty-four hours after 

 deposition ; the times taken by the three larval stages — for he 

 found that there were two larval ecdyses — were : first, about 

 twenty-four hours ; the second stage, he thought, was from 

 twenty-four to thirty-six hours ; and the third was probably 

 three or four days ; the entire larval life being from five to 

 seven days. The pupal stage was from five to seven days, so 

 that in August, when the experiments were carried on, the time 

 from the deposition of the egg to the exclusion of the imago 

 was ten to fourteen days. 



Taschenberg (t.c.) incorporates the work of Gleichen and 

 Bouche, and he does not appear to add materially to the facts 

 already mentioned. He states that the female files deposit their 

 eggs in damp and rotting food-stuffs, bad meat, broth, slices of 

 melon, dead animals, cesspools, and manure-heaps. He further 

 says that they have also been observed laying their eggs in 

 spittoons and open snuff-boxes. With reference to the last state- 

 ment, I find that the larvae will feed on expectorated matter 

 mixed with a solid substance, such as earth, if they are kept 

 warm, though they cannot feed on salivary sections merely. It 

 is interesting to note in connection with the statement as to flies 

 depositing their eggs in snufi-boxes that Forbes, as recorded b)^ 

 Howard (1911), reared M. domestica in 1889 from larvae found 

 in a box of .snuff at Kensington, III, U.S.A. 



Howard (1896 — 1906) first studied the breeding habits of the 

 flv in 1895 in Washington, U.S.A., and he described them in 



