508 
AMEEICA]^ E (lEIOTJLTTJRIST. 
[Novembee, 
The Doctor’s Talks. 
“ Tell us about Flies,” writes one young corres- 
poiulent. “ Where do they come from, and where 
do they go in winter ? Ai’e there ditl'erent kinds of 
Hies ?”—AVhilc some naturalists think that our 
house flies are the same as the house fly of Eng¬ 
land, and the rest of Euroi)e, others regard them 
as different. Singularly enough, none of our nat¬ 
uralists have studied our house fly, and observed 
its transformations, and all 
that we know of the life 
history of this very corrmon 
insect is from observations 
made in Europe. Flies, like 
most other insects, have a 
larval or maggot state; when 
the maggots arc full grown 
they pass into the pupa or 
chrysalis form, from which 
(in England in fourteen days) 
they come out as the perfect 
insect or winged fly. It is 
pretty well known that house 
flies pass their early life as 
maggots in manure, and, as 
most are aware, are more 
abundant in the neighborhood 
of stables than elsewhere. 
Fl.lfeS DO NOT GKOW. 
I have more than once 
heard persons speak of see¬ 
ing young flies in the spring, 
evidently thinking that the 
small flies they may meet 
with, are young individuals 
and will grow to their full 
size. When the flies come 
out of the chrysalis, they are 
as large as they ever will be, 
and if some are smaller than 
others they are different kinds 
of flies. The same is true of moths and butterflies. 
Dra'ivn (by W. M. Cary) and (Engraved for the American Ayriculturist. 
THE FOOT OF THE FEY. 
It is well know’n that flies can w.alk up a smooth 
pane of glass, and along the ceiling with their 
bodies downwards without falling. The foot of 
the fly, when examined by a powerful microscope, 
is found to have numerous hairs upon it, each with 
a little disk at its end. It is thought by most 
naturalists that the fly can use these disks as a boy 
uses a leather sucker, to enable it to cling to 
smooth surfaces. The eyes of the fly arc very 
large in proportion to the size of the licad. The 
microscope shows that tiiese are not simple eyes, 
but curiously made up of sejicrate facets, each of 
which is really an eye. The two compound eyes of 
the fly are made up of about four thousand simple 
ones. Human beings have only two simple eyes. 
THE imoBoscis of the fly. 
The so-c.alled trunk or proboscis of the fly, 
which, when not in use, is bent up under the head, 
is really a tongue, with a knob at the end. When 
the fly comes across anything sweet, this knob 
opens and spreads out two flat leaves, which ena¬ 
bles the insect to lap up liquids. These leaves are 
rough like a rasp, and with them the fly can tear 
delicate surfaces ; it often disfigures the covers 
of books by scraping off their polish. It also 
uses these rough leaves on our skin, and we say 
‘‘ the flies bite.” According to an English natur¬ 
alist, flies really have teeth. I give his engraving 
in w'hich the teeth of one lij) of the house fly are 
shown, of course greatly magnified. The three 
largest objects with rough upper edges are the teeth. 
These are not of bone like the teeth of the higher 
animals, but of “chitine,” a peculiar substance 
of which the hard parts of insects consist. A large 
share of the flies die at the end of the warm season, 
but enough to keep up the stock hide themselves in 
nooks and crevices, and there pass the winter. 
They come out of their liiding places on the return 
of spring. Tlie blowfly, the cheese-fly, and others 
are very different in habits from the house fly. 
Frogs by Day and Frogs by Night. 
Charlie and Eddie were two little boys who lived 
in the country. Near their home was a fine stream 
which contained plenty of nice speckled trout. One 
bright morning the two boys started with their 
poles and a box of w'orms to try their luck at 
catching some of the pretty fish. And over the 
hill and dow’n in the meadow they trudged until 
within sight of the brook, which they hailed with 
shouts of delight, and antici])ations of a big sur¬ 
prise for mother. “Hurrah!” said Charlie, as he 
threw himself down on a rock to bait his hook ; 
“ just wait and see if I don’t get some of those 
speckled beauties I” But he did not know the diffi¬ 
culties attending it. After tumbling into bushes 
and over logs, throwing their lines in here and 
there, they tried in vain to get near the big 1 ol:s 
where they were sure lather used to catch such 
beauties. But whether the trout were too shy or 
the bait not quite right, certain it was that they 
failed to get a single bite. Further on they found 
a lot of cattle standing just at the place where they 
wanted to make another trial. The cows stood 
coolly switching their tails to brush the flies off 
their backs. It was useless to attempt to fish there. 
In the mean time Eddis lost his hooks in a sunken 
log in the bottom of the stream, and had to make 
the best of a bent pin for a hook. Greatly dis¬ 
couraged they wandered further on to a pond near 
by. Here they found the water very low—the sun 
having nearly dried it up. However, they threw 
in their lines—when in a moment Charlie exclaimed! 
“Ed—I have a bite!” On pulling out his line, what 
was it but a big bull-frog! Charlie’s eyes gTew as 
large as saucers, as he exclaimed—“ Frenchmen 
eat ’em!”—“But we are not Frenchmen” said Eddie, 
“and 1 don’t think mother would like the ugly 
things.” But Charlie had found new sport, and 
quite as interesting as trout fishing to these small 
boys, whose energies were now bent on “frogging.” 
So as soon as they spied a frog floating with its 
nose out of tlie water, they would throw the line 
towards him, to invite him to make a jump for the 
bait. In this way they caught 
quite a number. Finally Eddie 
saw a huge frog sitting on a 
log near the bank. He tried 
to coax him by tickling his 
nose with the bait, but Mr. 
Froggie was much too digni¬ 
fied to bite, and only said 
“plunk! plunk!” without 
so much as stirring. At last 
Eddie, determining to get 
him, waded out in the mud 
and water, reaching, grabbed 
him in his hands, and amidtt 
kicking and struggling, man¬ 
aged to bring him in triumph 
to shore. The boys by this 
time having a big string of 
frogs, and feeling tired and 
hungry, started across the 
fields for home, now and 
then picking up an apple, 
and eating it as they walked. 
On reaching home they 
marched straight to their 
mother, who laughed heartily 
at the result of their day’s 
sport. She said “1 don’t want 
them, but you can ask Jane 
if she’ll cook them for you.” 
The boys. In great delight, 
took them to the cook, and 
holding them up with much pride, asked her to 
cooli them, saying, “ Frenchmen eat them !” But 
Jane, who disliked frogs above all things, exclaimed 
in horror—“It’s a Frinchman that ates them you 
say, the hathens—the Turrks, and is it me that 
would be arfter cooking the likes of ’em. Throw 
’em to the pigs—sure a Dutchman wouldn’t eatc 
them !” That night, when Eddie was in bed, he saw 
hosts of frogs sitting on the counterpane, bewail¬ 
ing the loss of their friends. One said “ where is 
old ‘Chime’!” another, “where is my little ‘toddy!’ 
my darling ‘chechunk!’ and pretty ‘ plunt!’and 
oh where, where is dear old ‘ daddy ’.” One great 
fat frog cried out: “What shall we do to the 
cruel boy that hooked our loved ones !” Then all 
the others said “ Plunk, jdunk,” and Eddie was so 
KETRIBUTION. 
friglitencd that he sat up with a start, to find that 
he had only been dreanung, and that daylight was 
peeping in between the window-curtains. The 
reader will observe, from the engravings, that the 
frogs in the dream W'ere much larger than those in 
the stream. \^e may imagine that they felt their 
importance, when asking for information about 
their near relatives, and looked as big as they 
could while seated around upon the counterpane. 
