INSECT SIPPERS AND GNA WERS. 263 
father is a peaceable sucker of. honey while the mother 
is bloodthirsty. 
Among the gnats and mosquitoes the father dies 
so soon that he does not feed at all, while the mother 
has a mouth made of sharp lancets, with which she 
pierces the skin of her victim and then sucks up the 
juices through the lips. Among the botflies, however, 
which are so much dreaded by horses and cattle, it is 
not with the mouth in feeding that the wound is 
made. In this case the mother has a scaly pointed 
instrument in the tail* which she thrusts into the 
flesh of the animal so as to lay her eggs beneath its 
skin, where the young grub feeds and undergoes its 
change into a fly. 
For we must remember that every fly we see has 
had its young maggot life and its time of rest. Our 
common house-fly was hatched in a dust heap or a 
dung heap, or among decaying vegetables, and fed in 
early life on far less tasty food than it finds in our 
houses. The bluebottle was hatched in a piece of 
meat, and fed there as a grub ; and the gadfly began 
its life inside a horse, its careful mother having placed 
her eggs on some part of the horse's body which he 
was sure to lick and so to carry the young grub to 
its natural warm home. 
But of all early lives that of the gnat is probably 
the most romantic, and certainly more pleasant than 
those of most flies. When the mother is ready to lay 
her eggs she flies to the nearest quiet water, and 
there, collecting the eggs together with her long hind 
legs, glues them into a little boat-shaped mass and 
* A similar instrument . may be seen in the daddy-long-legs if you 
happen to catch a female ; she uses it to thrust her eggs into the earth. 
