AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
14r9 
1879.] 
CROSS-WORD. 
My first is in shower but not in rain, 
My next is in grief but not in pain, 
My third is in heaven but not in sky, 
My fourth is in leap bm.not, in fly, 
My fifth is in paint but not in draw, 
My sixth is in chin lint, not in 'aw, 
My seventh is in girl but not in lass, 
My eighth is in window but not in glass, 
My ninth is in pity but not in love. 
My tenth is in eagle but not in dove. 
My eleventh is in claw but not. in wing, 
My twelfth is in hoop but not in ring, 
My thirteenth is in wasp but not in bee: 
My whole is a pretty, well-known tree. 
ANAGRAMS. 
1. Riot airing. 
•2. Best coals. 
3. Is his tin dug? 
4. See mine. 
5. Does Ed try ? 
6. I clip a lot. 
7. O! sing verse. 
8. Far?—Steward. 
9. Avert attic. 
10. Bears on ale. 
DROP LETTER PUZZLE. 
(Every other letter of each word is dropped, commenc¬ 
ing with the first letter.! 
1. — p — i — h — n — s —. 5. — n — b — i —— t —d. 
2. — i — c — n — e — t — d. (i. — e — i — 1 — t — r —. 
3. — a — r — 1 — g — o — s. 7. — e — d — e — o — e. 
4. — m — o — t — n — e. 8. —o—r—s—o—d—n—. 
Hewn lal liet standblemshii: fo file rea geno, Het daw- 
roc snakes ot hated, het verba vile no. 
ANSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE FEBRUARY NUMBER. 
CLASSICAL DOUBLE ACROSTIC. 
Diogenes—Socrates. 
D—emodocu—3 
I- n —O 
O- lympi -C 
G- i -It 
E— urop —A 
N- igh —T 
E— urydic —E 
S— esostri —S 
Hidden Rivers.— 1. Red. 2. 
Green. 3. Gila. 4. Ohio. 5. 
North. 6. East. 
Numerical Enigmas.—1. 
Snowflake. 2. Search the 
Scriptures. 
Malange. — Pearl, carl, 
pear, peal, Lear, reap, pare, 
leap, pale, plea, lea, ear, rap, 
ale, pea. 
Stab Puzzle.—D eer, room, moor, reed, door, raps, spot, 
trap, pool, loot, plow, ward : (which read backwards will be) 
draw, wolf, foot, loop, part, tops, spar, rood, deer, room, 
moor, reed. 
Anagrams.— 1. Mignonnette. 2. Affectionate. 3. Remi¬ 
niscences 4. Contrabands. 5. Necromancers. 6. Ascer¬ 
tains. 7. Chiropodist. 8. Literature. 9. Atmosphere. 10. 
Chalybeate. 
Crossword.—M aine. 
Pictorial Anagram Puzzle.—'T he pictures represent 
"storm," • ait" (a little island), “violet,” “Eden," and 
‘ note,” the letters of which, transposed, will make the prov¬ 
erb—" It is never too late to mend." 
Puzzles, answers, and such matters as were formerly 
directed to •‘Aunt Sue,” may hereafter be sent to “The 
Doctor,” No. 245 Broadway, New York. 
The doctor's Correspondence. 
THE HISTORY OF THE HOUSE-FLY. 
During the past three or four years several young peo¬ 
ple have asked me to tell them about the common Honse 
Fly, how and where it breeds, and its history before it 
appears as a fly. One would suppose that there could be 
no difficulty in learning all that one would wish to know 
about this, the most familiar of insects, and that the 
scientific books would give the whole story. I was 
greatly surprised to find that our entomologists, who 
have studied the rare insects, and given the fullest des¬ 
criptions of those that are hardly known outside of their 
cabinets, and which do not have, so far as we are aware, 
any relations to us through onr crops or otherwise, 
KNOW ALMOST NOTHING ABOUT THE HOUSE-FLY— 
ways deposit their eggs in manure, as one of the observ¬ 
ers found his upon a piece of cold meat, and the other 
obtained his eggs by placing a piece of liver where the 
House Fly could 
deposit her eggs 
upon it. The 
shape of the egg 
is shown in fig. 1, 
which is much 
magnified, its 
Fig'. 2. CHin salis. rea i diameter be¬ 
ing i/ 30 th of an inch; the surface, highly magnified, 
was found to be lined as shown in a part of the en¬ 
graving. The eggs hatched in 2 or 3 days, and 
THE MAGGOT, OR LARVA, 
was produced; this, shown in fig. 2, was 1 / 20 tli of an inch 
in diameter, and its skin sufficiently transparent to al¬ 
low the interior parts, its breathing organs, etc., to be 
seen under the microscope. The maggots were so gree¬ 
dy and ate away at the putrid liver in such a lively man¬ 
ner, that the mass was in constant motion. When the 
maggots have made theirgrowth, the time being governed 
by the weather, they become quiet and form a chrysalis 
(fig.3),about '/40th of an inch through.from which the per¬ 
fect fly soon appears, the time from laying of the egg to 
the appearance of the tty. being from 8 to 14 days. Now 
you have all the early history of the English House Fly 
I can find, and some of yon should watch 
rtTflTmt) t ' le ' va )’ s our °wn, to see how the two 
£Wll\\\.V^ a S ree - Those who have the American 
vl Unu y Agriculturist Simple Microscope will find 
it useful in such examinations. Mind 
r lg. 6. MAG- there are several others besides the 
GOT OF FLY. TT a . , ~ .. 
House fly, and that one of these, the 
Blow-fly, is much more likely to lay its eggs, or young 
maggots on meat than that.. .Now that spring has opened 
we may expect questions about insects; here is one 
ABOUT RAISING BUTTERFLIES, 
and I will let James, who lives at Williamsburgh, L. I., 
tell his own story : 
“ Dear Doctor : A lady has sent me some chrysalides, 
asking me to take care of them for her, and to give her 
‘one or two of the butterflies when they come out.’ I 
wrote and asked her if I was to bring them up on the 
bottle, and she answered ‘ yes,--a bottle of chloroform, 
as soon as the butterfly appears.’ Now I really don’t 
know what to do with them,—whether to shut them up 
in a jar, or box,—pnt them into a cold room or a warm 
one—and in my extremity I concluded to ask advice of 
you. Please tell me how best to take care of chrysalides 
so that I may secure the perfect butterflies with the least 
injury to their plumage, and oblige James F. W.” 
Those who wish to have the best and most perfect 
specimens of butterflies and moths, gather the cocoons 
or chrysalides of those which pass their pupa state above 
ground and hatch them in the house, and so soon as the 
insect is ready to fly it is made into a “specimen” be¬ 
fore it has a chance to injure its wings and become bat¬ 
tered by storms and otherwise defaced. I would advise 
James to place the chrysalides under a coarse sieve, or 
in a shallow box covered with mosquito netting, or ot tier 
coarse fabric, and place them in a moderately warm room 
where they can be looked at every day. When a butterfly 
or moth first comes out of its case it is usually a 
the insect of all insects thnt is with us daily throughout 
a large share of the year, which reminds us not only daily, 
but nightly, of its presence, and for the shutting out 
and trapping of which much ingenuity and large sums 
of money are expended every year. When the request 
to say something about the House Fly first came, I turned 
to the latest and fullest work upon insects, by one of our 
most learned students of the science, expecting to find 
here all the needed facts. What was my surprise to 
read: “ Every one notices that house-flies are most abun¬ 
dant around barns in August and September, and it is in 
the ordure of stables that the early stages of this insect 
are passed. No one has traced the transformations of 
this fly in this country, 
hut we copy * * the 
rather rude figures * * 
of the Mvsca domestica 
of Europe, which is 
supposed to be our spe- 
Fig. 1.—EGG OF FLY. cies -” Entomologists 
are strange people; they 
don’t appear to know whether our commonest insect 
is different from a similar one in Europe, and are not 
sure of how or where it breeds ! 11 
If those who devote their lives to the study of insects 
know nothing about flies, I couldn’t be expected to give 
you any help, and so let the matter rest. A few days ago 
1 came across, in the English “Science Gossip,” an ar¬ 
ticle showing that two Englishmen had been studying 
THE EGGS OF THE EUROPEAN HOUSE FLY, 
and if, as onr entomologists suppose—hut do not seem 
to have decided the fact—our fly is the same as theirs, we 
can learn something of its early stages. Flies do not al¬ 
POOR, HELPLESS, LIMP THING, 
often wet and bedraggled, and a very unpromising crea¬ 
ture. Let it alone. In time it will unfold its wings, stretch 
them into shape, and dry them, when they will show 
their proper colors and real beauty. It often takes several 
hours to get ready to fly. If it is to be made into a speoi- 
Fig. 4. —SETTING A BUTTERFLY, 
men, it should be killed just when it is ready to fly, and 
the easiest way to do this, and one that causes the insect 
no pain, is to pnt a few drops of chloroform upon its 
body. This usually kills small insects atonce ; the larger 
ones, after having the chloroform, should be put under a 
tumbler or other glass, or shut in a tight tin box, so that 
the vapors of the chloroform will be confined. Some of 
the large moths will not be killed by chloroform; for 
these,entomologists use a solution of one dram of Cyanide 
of Potassium in an ounce of water. A large needle wetted 
with this and thrust into the insect,usually lulls at once. 
Fig. 5.—SETTING-BOARD FOR A LARGE MOTH. 
This is so deadly poisonous that I do not advise its use 
by youngsters—and as I do not know whether James is 
old enough to be trusted with so dangerous stuff, I men¬ 
tion it as one of the things for him to carefully let alone 
if he is a mere boy. Having killed the insect, if it is to 
MAKE A SPECIMEN 
it must be carefully dried. Some merely have a long pin 
thrust through the chest of the insect—that part to which 
the wings are attached—and its wings pnt in shape, as 
shown in fig. 4. If it is a moth wilh a large body, a 
grooved board, like that in fig. 5, or a hoard with two 
strips, tacked on to leave a space between them, is nsed. 
Where the moths have very large fat bodies, they are cut 
open below with a pair of fine scissors, the contents re¬ 
moved, and the cavity filled with cotton, made into a roll 
of the proper size ; this cotton is covered with powdered 
arsenic, put into the body, and that is closed with a few' 
stitches. But as these operations of stuffing, etc., require 
much skill, it is not likely that the lady who left the chry¬ 
salides with James will expect any such care from him. 
A Rowing Maclaine. 
Sometimes we have had inquiries from hoys about fit¬ 
ting up an in-door gymnasium where they could take ex- 
EXERCISING WITH THE ROWING MACHINE. 
ercise in stormy weather. The Captain of a Boat Club in 
Penn, sends us a sketch of a rowing machine that has 
been put up in his boat honse, and which is much liked 
by the members. This strikes us as a capital thing for a 
boy’s gymnasium, as it costs very little, can be easily 
made lighter or heavier, and gives just the kind of exer¬ 
cise that is obtained in the nse of the oar. It will be 
seen from the engraving that it only requires two pullies, 
a cord, and a handle, with a weight suspended as there 
shown. Those who are practising to pull in a boat pre¬ 
fer such a sliding seat as is nsed in rowing shells, but 
those who exercise for the sake of exercise, do not need 
this. The weight is to he graduated according to the 
strength of the person; from 30 to 40 lbs. is used by 
the members of the boat dull—but boys will need much 
less. The weight should be so small at first as not to be 
fatiguing, and may be gradually increased. Pulling at 
weights lias long been a favorite gymnasium exercise, 
bnt we have not before seen the weights arranged, as 
above described, to give an exercise similar to rowing. 
A Curious Question, not new, bnt quite puz¬ 
zling to those who have not seen it: “How can two 
persons he born at the same moment, and both die at 
the same instant, and yet one have seen, in fact lived, 
twenty days more than the other? It can be so. Those 
who have not seen the answer may enjoy finding out- 
while we delay the answer until next month. Our young- 
readers need not trouble themselves to send answers- 
