
76 THE INSECT WORLD. 
The inhabitants of the Zambesi can, therefore, have no domestic 
animal but the goat. When herds of cattle driven by travellers 
or dealers are obliged to cross these regions, they only move them 
during the bright nights of the cool season, and are careful to 
smear them with dung mixed with milk; the Tsetse fly having 
an intense antipathy to the dung of animals, besides being in this 
season rendered dormant by the lowness of the temperature. It 
is only by such precautions that they are able to get through 
this dangerous stage of their journey. 
The large blue meat-fly, the familiar representative of the 
genus Calliphora, is known to all by its brilliant blue and white 
reflecting abdomen. This fly, which is common everywhere, is 
the Calliphora vomitoria on which Réaumur has made many 
beautiful observations, which we will make known to our 
readers. 
If we shut up a blue meat-fly in a glass vase, as Réaumur did, 
and place near the insect a piece of fresh meat, before half a day 
is passed, the fly will have deposited its eggs thereon one 
after the other, in irregular heaps, of various sizes. The whole of 
these heaps consists of about two hundred eggs, which are of an 
iridescent white colour, and four or five times as long as they are 
broad. In less than twenty-four hours after the egg is laid the 
larva is hatched. It is no sooner born than it thinks of feeding, 
and buries itself in the meat, with the aid of the hooks and lancets 
with which it is provided. 
These worms do not appear to discharge any solid excrement, 
but they produce a sticky liquid which 
keeps the meat in a moist state and 
hastens its putrefaction. The larve eat 
voraciously and always; so much s80, 
that in four or five days they arrive at 
their full growth. They then take no 
Fig. 54.—Eggs of the Meat-fy. | more nourishment until they are trans- 
begets ne dl formed into flies. They are now about 
to assume the pupa state. In this condition it is no longer neces- 








de l'Afrique australe, et voyages 4 travers le continent Sainte-Paul de Loanda a 
l’Embouchure du Zambéze, de 1840 4 1846, traduit de l’anglais.”’ In 8vo. Paris, 
1859. Pages 93—95.—EpD.) 

