
642 A CHAPTER ON FLIES. 
An allied fly is the parent of the cheese maggot. The fly 
itself, Piophila casei (Pl. 13, fig. 1), is black, with metallic 
green reflections, and the legs are dark and paler at the knee- 
joints, the middle and hind pair of tarsi being dark honey - 
yellow. The Wine-fly is also a Piophila, and lives the life 
of a perpetual toper in old wine casks, and partially emptied 
beer, cider, and wine bottles, where, with its puparium 
(Pl. 13, fig. 4), it may be found floating dead in its favorite 
beverage. 
We now come to the more degraded forms of Diptera 
which live parasitically on various éntinala: We figure, from 
a specimen in the Museum of the Peabody Avadeiny; the 
Bird-tick, Ornithomyia (Pl. 13, fig. 7), which lives upon the 
Great Horned Owl. Its body is much flattened, adapted for 
its life under the feathers, where it gorges itself with the 
blood of its host. 
In the wingless Sheep-tick, Melophagus ovinus (PI. 13, fig. 
10, with the puparium on the left), the body is wingless and 
very hairy, and the proboscis is very long. The young- are 
developed within the body of the parent, until they attain the 
pupa state, when she deposits the puparium, which is nearly 
half as large as her abdomen. Other genera are parasitic on 
bats, among them are the singular spider-like Bat-tick, Nyc- 
teribia (Pl. 13, fig. 11), which have small bodies and enor- 
mous legs, and are either blind, or provided with four simple 
eyes. They are of small size, being only a line or two in 
length. Such degraded forms of Diptera are the connecting 
Nikė between the true six-footed insects and the order of 
Arachnids (spiders, mites, ticks, etc. ). The reader should 
compare the Nycteribia with the young six-footed moose-tick 
figured on page 559 of the Narvnatisr. Another spider-like . 
fly is the Chionea valga (Pl. 13, fig. 12), which is a degraded 
Tipula, the latter genus standing near the head of the sub- 
order Diptera. The Chionea, storii to Harris, lives in 
its early stages in the ground like many other gnats, and is _ 
found early in the spring, sometimes crawling over the snow. — 
