What Flies Do.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1823, 18 December 1875, Page 8 (Supplement)

What Flies Do.

An English chemist named Emerson publishes in the Scientific American the result of his observations of flies, which is presented. If what he reports is truthful there should be more kindhearted Uncle Tobys to acknowledge the debt we owe these little insects. Did you ever watch a fly who has just alighted after soaring about the room for some little time ? He goes though a series of operations which remind you of a cat licking herself after a meal, or a bird pluming its feathers. First the hind feet are rubbed together, then each hind leg is passed over a wing, then the fore legs undergo a similar treatment; and lastly, if you look sharp, you will see the insect carry his proboscis over his '■ legs and about his body as far as he can reach. The minute trunk is perfectly retractile and terminates in two large lobes, which you can see spread out when the insects begin a meal on a lump of sugar. Now, the rubbing together of legs and' wings may be a j soothing operation, but for what purpose is this carefully going over the body with the trunk, especially when that organ is not fitted for licking but simply for grasping and sucking up food. On placing a fly under the ■ microscope, to the investigator's disgust it appeared covered with lice. Mr. EmersOn concluded that here was something which at once required looking into. Why were fiies lousy ? The y seemed to take his positon very coolly, and, expending his proboscis, began to sweep it over his body as if ■ he had just alighted. A glance though the microscope, however, showed that the operation was not one of self-beautification, for wherever the lice were there the trunk went. The lice disappeared into the trunk, and the fly was eating them. He took the paper into the kitchen and waved it around, taking care that no flies touched it, went back to the microscope and there found animalcules, the same as on flies. He had now arrived at something definite; the animalcules were floating in the air and the quick motions of the flies gathered them on their bodies, and the flies then went into some quiet comer to have their dainty meal. The investigator goes on describing how he continued the experiment in a variety of localities, and how, in dirty and bad-smelling quarters, he found the myriads of flies which existed there literally covered with animalcules, while other flies, captured in bedroom?, or ventilated, clean apartments were miserably lean and entirely free from their psey. Wherever filth existed, evolving germs which might

generate in disease, ther?T^ flies covering themselves witt* organisms, and greedily devnh'^ same. J V(%g