IOO 



HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OS SIP. 



tended as a surprise for me, and having no box with 

 him, converted his hat — not a boxer, tor then there 

 might have been more room — into a receptacle for it. 

 On reaching home he secured the moth. Shortly 

 after, his forehead came out into numerous little 

 white bumps, which irritated him beyond endurance, 

 and the more he attacked them the worse they 

 became. In some alarm he consulted his medical 

 man, who told him that there was no doubt that he 

 had checked the perspiration, and prescribed a 

 draught and a lotion — inside and outside applications ! 

 On mentioning the occurrence to me some time 

 after, and how he had disposed of the moth, the 

 mysterious bumps were explained, and we both had 

 a hearty laugh at the doctor's expense. Now, the 

 cause of irritation is in some way connected with the 

 hairs of both caterpillar and moth ; but entomolo- 

 gists cannot yet decide whether their effect is simply 

 mechanical, or whether they possess poisonous pro- 

 perties besides. The moth is about the size of the 

 small garden white butterfly. There is a species 

 identical in appearance, except that the tail in this 

 insect is brown, called therefrom the brown tail, 

 {Liparis chryscrrhcea) which I used to take abun- 

 dantly on the hedges by the canal here, both in the 

 caterpillar and moth stages, ten or twelve years ago. 

 The caterpillar is much more soberly dressed than 

 the gold-tail, having no scarlet, nor white about it. 

 Singularly enough, although I search for it regularly 

 every year, the caterpillar and moth have entirely 

 disappeared, and what is more curious, apparently 

 throughout the country, no records of their occur- 

 rence having been made for several years. 



Joseph Anderson, Jun. 



Chichester-. 



THE BLUE-BOTTLE FLIES. 



A SAD TALE OF SUFFERING. 



By the Author of "Insect Variety." 



ONE of the most shocking cases of scholechiasis 

 I ever met with, says Mr. Kirby in his " In- 

 troduction to Entomology," is related in "Bell's 

 Weekly Messenger," in the following words : — 



"On Thursday, June 25th, died at Asbornby, 

 Lincolnshire, John Page, a pauper belonging to Silk- 

 Willoughby, under circumstances truly singular. He 

 being of a restless disposition, and not choosing to 

 stay in the parish workhouse, was in the habit of 

 strolling about the neighbouring villages, subsisting 

 on the pittance obtained from door to door ; the 

 support he usually received from the benevolent was 

 bread and meat ; and after satisfying the cravings of 

 nature, it was his custom to deposit the surplus pro- 

 vision, particularly the meat, betwixt his shirt and 

 skin. Having a considerable portion of this pro- 

 vision in store, so deposited, he was taken rather 

 unwell, and laid himself down in a field in the parish 



of Scredington, when, from the heat of the season at 

 that time, the meat speedily became putrid, and was 

 of course struck by the flies. These not only pro- 

 ceeded to devour the inanimate pieces of flesh, but 

 also, literally, to prey upon the living substance ; 

 and when the wretched man was accidentally found 

 by some of the inhabitants, he was so eaten by the 

 maggots, that his death seemed inevitable. After 

 clearing away as well as they were' able these 

 shocking vermin, those who found Page conveyed 

 him ',to Asbornby, and a surgeon was immediately 

 procured, who declared that his body was in such a 

 state that dressing it must be little short of in- 

 stantaneous death ; and, in fact, the man did survive 

 the operation but a few hours. When first found, 

 and again when examined by the surgeon, he 

 presented a sight loathsome in the extreme. White 

 maggots of enormous size were crawling in and upon 

 his body, which they had most shockingly mangled, 

 and the removing of the external ones served only to 

 render the sight more horrid." 



Although among the buzzing tribes of carrion 

 insects the perpetrator of this dire tragedy is involved 

 in glcom, suspicion clearly points out the butcher's 

 blue-bottle, the Calliphora vomitoria of science, as the 

 agent These are truly the race of Beelzebub, 

 hastening with groping scent to the first sickly taint 

 of decay, and hurrying their eggs from their bodies as 

 newly-hatched maggots, eager to hasten the progress 

 of dissolution with their jaws and putrifying excre- 

 ment. In them the assassin's knife and druggist's 

 art. are seen, and there was a moment when we were 

 led to surmise that the blue-bottles of Paris were as 

 instrumental in war as the blood-stained swords of 

 Germany. But to understand fully this diabolical 

 blue-bottle instinct, we must visit in our dreams that 

 new land discovered by Columbus, those Edens of 

 the western wave, dear to fancy ; where love-lorn 

 maidens pass the idle hours swinging in the chequering 

 shadow, and fanning the soft air with painted plumes; 

 where the rivers warble on golden sands, and nature 

 pains with her beauty. 



No theatrical placard ever read with a more sensa- 

 tional thrill, than the .following lurid heading to a 

 scientific paper, to be found in the " Boletin de la 

 Academia Nacional de Ciencias," of the Argentine 

 Republic : "A new case of myiasis observed in the 

 province of Cordova in the Argentine Republic, and 

 in the Republic of Venezuela," by P. Auguste Conil. 

 It is a dark tale of human suffering hung with forest 

 gloom, whose loneliness whets the razor-edge of 

 despair. 



" The house situated beside mine," says Monsieur 

 Conil, "is occupied by M. Augustus Ortiz, whose 

 family inhabit Le Totoral, a village situated twenty 

 leagues to the north of Cordova, close to the railway 

 which connects this town with that of Tucuman. 

 One of his sisters, Josefa Ortiz, aged eighteen, fell 

 sick, and experienced such acute pains that she 



