FLIES. 137 



pirate among the flies, lying in wait for and cap- 

 turing the home-bound honey-laden worker, tear- 

 ing open the nectarious sacks, and devouring 

 the contents. Mr. Charles Riley, a curious and 

 expert entomologist, says that it has been known 

 to kill "a hundred and forty-one bees in a day." 



What singular forms there are among the dip- 

 tera that have deviated from the typical flies ! 

 There are degraded races that have no wings and 

 have taken to the ways of the mites, living as 

 parasites on various birds and animals. Their 

 bodies are hard and scale-like, fitting them to live 

 under the hair and feathers and gorge themselves 

 with blood. The sheep tick is a familiar exam- 

 ple of this group. There are also the spider-flies 

 that closely imitate the little salticus familiaris 

 (the familiar leaping spider), that trips about on 

 its light, fantastic legs, half crawling and half 

 jumping along in the hot sunshine after prey. 



In a botanical ramble, I happened once on a 

 dipterous oddity that fairly electrified me with 

 surprise. Walking by an old slough-bed, where 

 the water had evaporated and left the half aquatic 

 plants to grow luxuriantly in the mire, I plucked 

 a specimen of bur-reed, just then in bloom, and 

 with a glass was about to examine the stamens, 

 when I observed a grotesque appearing insect, a 

 cross, apparently, between the grasshopper and 

 fly, crawling slowly over the dense spherical 



