" FLIES AT BARTHOLOMEW TIDE." 203 



determine the identity of one of those two-winged 

 insects which have formed the subject of my present 

 communication. 



I now take leave of the Diptera ; but before doing 

 so let me call your attention to a passage, which I 

 frankly confess my inability to elucidate. In " Henry 

 the Fifth," Act V. Sc. II., he makes Burgundy say — 

 " Maids well summer'd and warm kept, are like flies 

 at Bartholomew tide, — bUnd, though they have their 

 eyes ; and then, they will endure handling, which 

 before would not abide looking on." This curious 

 comparison is passed over in silence by all the 

 commentators to whose notes I have had access ; 

 and even Douce, who has shed his antiquarian 

 lore over so many ancient customs and opinions, 

 is on this point altogether silent. Among school- 

 boys, in some parts of the country, there is a preva- 

 lent idea, that flies become blind about the beginning 

 of autumn, which is the very belief which Shakspeare 

 has laid hold of, and thus embodied. But still the 

 question naturally recurs, how could such an opinion 

 ever have become general ? As the house-fly (Musca 

 domestica) has not lost its activity so early as the 

 24th of August, Mr. Hahday has suggested to me 

 that Musca rudis, which begins to swarm about 

 windows at the approach of autumn, might be the 



