
A CHAPTER ON FLIES. 587 
from her light bark, the cast chrysalis skin of her early life 
beneath the waters, and sails away in the sunlight, her vel- 
vety wings fringed with silken hairs, and her neatly bodiced 
trim figure (though her nose is rather salient, considering 
that it is half as long as her entire body), present a beauty 
and grace of form and movement quite unsurpassed by her 
dipterous allies. She draws near and softly alights upon 
the hand of the charmed beholder, subdues her trumpeting 
notes, folds her wings noiselessly upon her back, daintily 
sets down one foot after the other, and with an eagerness 
chastened by the most refined delicacy for the feelings of 
her victim, and with the air of Velpeau redivivus drives 
through crushed and bleeding capillaries, shrinking nerves 
and injured tissues, a many-bladed lancet of marvellous fine- 
ness, of wonderful complexity and fitness. While engorging 
herself with our blood, we will 
examine under the microscope 
the mosquito’s mouth. The 
head (Fig. 1) is rounded, with = 
the two eyes occupying a large 
part of the surface, and nearly 
meeting on the top of the head. 
Out of the forehead, so to 
speak, grow the long, delicate, 
hairy antenne (a), and just be- 
low arises the long beak which 
consists of the bristle-like max- 4 
ille (mæ, with their palpi, mp) Ig 
and mandibles (m),and the single hair-like labrum, all which 
five bristle-like organs are laid in the hollowed labium (/). 
us massed into a single awl-like beak, the mosquito, with- 
out any apparent effort, thrusts them into the flesh, and by 
aid of the sucker-like expansion of the end of the labium, 
draws in the blood through the channel formed by the five 
bristles and their sheath. Her hind-body may be seen filling 
with the red blood, until it cries quits, and the insect with- 

