The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-11-23
The Life of the HOuse.Fly.

The commonest insect on our continent
is the house fly (Wusca domestica); andyet
how many know its life history? Every
body is familiar with its habits in the
adult state, when it buzzes noisily around
sleeping and living rooms, wherever it
can penetrate, and torments the most
patient spirit with its restlessly. imper-
tinent, meddlesome disposition. Yet ask
where it was born and bred, and what sort
of a life it had prior to its appearance on
the scene, full-grown and equipped as
two-winged and six-legged bandit and
skirmisher, and the answer will probably
amount, in the sum of its information, to
a cipher. 1t is only very lately that nat
uralsts have learned its mode Of growth:
therefore common folks are excusable for
ignorance Of its complete career.
In the american Naturalist, M. A. S.
Packard, Jr., gives an account OF his in
vestigations into the subject, which were
pursued two summers ago. This observer
placed a house-f1y in glass bottle, where
she was secure and yet visible; and in
fourteen hours noticed that she had depos-
tied 100 eggs. These were long, slender
and cylindrical, and little smaller at
one end than the other. They were laid
in irregular heaps on the bottom of the
bottle, and, just forty eight hours after,
a number of them had Matched, and the
young maggots were crawling around in
quest of something to eat. Again; tn
observer placed some fresh horse manure
at an open window i'll the sun, and added
new masses from time to time during sew
eral weeks. This, being suited to then
needs, attracted numbers of flies, which
deposited eggs in the cracks and crevices
I, ufc nd f1,r1o f1,nir oO
were under the eye of the naturalist in all
stages of their development.
The shell of the egg is SO dense that the
but in twenty-four hours the young mag
got was ready to come out. Those Matched
in confinement were four or five hours
later, and the young were smaller. When
one day old, the maggots went through
the process of melting; and when two
day or two days and a half old, repeated
the process. After the second melting
they lived three Or four days, and then
passed into the pupa or chrysalis state.
In this dormant condition they slept for
from five to seven days, and then, pushing
off the end of the pupa case, emerged in
the form of a house-tty, ready to course
through the air and alight ON some human
nose, to tickle it intolerably with their
fast-playing feet, or to dip into some dish
of enticing sweets and suck their fill of it.
s- :" When free from its prison." says MIR.
Packard. /" the fly walks, or rather runs,
nervously about, as if 1aboring under a
good deal of mental excitement, and quite
dazed by the new world of life and light
about it; for, as a maggot 1t was blind,
deaf and dumb. Now its wings are soft,
small, baggy AMI half their final size.
The fluid that fills them soon, however,
dries up, the skin of the fly attains the
colors of maturity, and it flies off with a
buzz of contentment and ligh t-heartedness
born of its mercurial temperament. That
the fly not only throws off, in its buzz,
songs of the affections, love ditties, but
also may vary its notes accordingly as it is
elevated or depressed in spirits concern
ing more trivial and less absorbing mat
tiers, We are assured by Sir John Lubbock,
who says that the sounds of insects do not
merely serve to bring the sexes together;
they are not merely love songs but also
serve, like any true language, to express
the feelings" 49,. -. Z
The life of house-f1y born in August
is generally closed in from four to six
weeks, and is cut off by the frost or by
the attacks of fungus plants. A few prob
ably survive until the ensuing summer,
and these serve to perpetuate the species,
The house-fly of America is supposed to
be identical with the house-fy Of Europe.