







A CHAPTER ON FLIES. 589 
distinguished from the females by their long maxillary palpi, 
and their thick, bushy, feathered antenne. The female lays 
her elongated oval eggs in a boat-shaped mass, which floats 
on the water. A mosquito lives three or four weeks in the 
water before changing to the adult or winged stage. Just 
how many days they live in the latter state we do not know. 
; ur readers will understand then, that all flies, like our 
mosquito for example, grow while in the larva and pupa 
state, and after they acquire wings do not grow, So that the 
small midges are not young mosquitoes, but the adult winged 
forms of an entirely different species and genus of fly, and 
the myriads of small flies, commonly supposed to be the 
young of larger flies, are adult forms belonging to different 
species of different genera, and perhaps of different families 
of the suborder of Diptera. The typical species of the genus 
Culex, to which the mosquito belongs, is Culex pipiens, de- 
scribed by Linneus, and there are already over thirty North 
American species of this genus described in various works. 
The habits of a fly allied to the mosquito are given, with 
t illustrations, in the July number of the Narurauist, which 
_ farther elucidates the habits of these insects. The Hessian- 
fly and Wheat-midge are briefly referred to and figured on 
page 163, so that we pass over these to consider another pest 
of our forests and prairies. 
: : The Black fly is even a more formidable pest than the mos- 
: quito; In the northern, subarctic regions, it opposes 4 barrier 
against travel. The Labrador fisherman spends his summer 
on the seashore, scarcely daring to penetrate the interior on 
account of the swarms of these flies. During a summer resi- 
dence on this coast, we sailed up the Esquimaux river for six 
or eight miles, spending a few hours at a house situated on 
the bank. The day was warm and but little wind blowing, 
7 and the swarms of black flies were absolutely terrific. In 
vain we frantically waved our net among them, allured by 
nani rare moth; after making a few desperate charges ™ 
— the face of the thronging pests, we had to retire to the 
