The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1876-12-28
The HOuse.Fly.

National Repository for January.I
1t is strange that until within a very
few years we have known but little OF
the life history of one of our most inti-
mate companions-a summer boarder,
in fact, coming at the opening OF the
season and remaining to its close, and,
without an invitation, making himself
perfectly at home. Though the house
iiy lives the larger part of his life under
our very eyes, his early history is passed
in singular Obscurity. DR.. A. ,. Packard
has lately looked into the history OF the
fly with his customary patience and sa-
gacity. No difference can be detected
between the European and the American
house-hy, and it is likely to remain an
unsettled question whether he is
aboriginal or naturalized foreigner. he
comes from an egg, of course. 1t would
require from twenty to twenty-five OF
them, laid end to end, to make line an
inch long. The thickness is about one
fourth OF the length, so that the shape is
nearly that of long, slender cylinder,
little thickened at the end that is to be
the head. A captive fly laid one hun
dred and twenty eggs during a single
night. The favorite nest of the fly is in
the filth of stables and pig.st.es. Here
they hatch in about twenty-tour hours
heat and moisture being the necessary
conditions. The little maggot sheds its
skin at the end of the first day, and gets
larger one which il wears only two
days, when it molts second time, pass
ing into third stage, in which it con-
tinues three or four days more. Its
body then contracts into barrel-shaped
form, and becomes hard and brown,
forming a case within which the body of
the larva is curiously transformed into
that of the pupa.
Our house-fy having, as a maggot,
lived a life of squalor, immersed in its
revolving food, with its new change of
form, involving the death of one-half OF
its body and the origin OF a new head
and thorax, with legs and wings, eyes,
feelers, and mouth, after short sleep of
from five to seven days, in its chrysalis
state, pushes off one end of its case, and,
comes forth with wings, with legs where
before were no traces of feet, and
stranger still, with new instincts. 1t is
difficult to realize how striking are the
changes, physical and psychological,
which the house:fy undergoes in the
transition from the maggot to the
volant, cursorial being which plays all
sorts of antics, tasting the sugar, tapping
the molasses, or scraping with its spiny
tongue the rich binding OF your choicest
books.
If in the winged condition it is one of
our most disagreeable companions, so
that we wonder why flies were ever
made, it sheuld be remembered that they
had their infancy as maggots, and the
loathsome life they live as scavengers
gives us purer air and lowers the Sum-
mer death-rate of our cities. Thus,
while stables and piggeries and filth are
tolerated by city authorities, the young
of the house-ay and the hesh-hy and
blow.fy, with their thousand allies, are
doing something toward purifying the
pestilential air, and averting the summer
brood of cholera, dysentary, diphtheria,
typhus and typhoid fever.
The life of the hOuse.fy may then be
summed upas follows: 1t lives one day
in the egg-state, from five days toa week
as a maggot, from Eve to seven days in
the pupa or chrysalis state-in all from
ten to fourteen days in the month OF
August-before the winged or adult
period. 1t is often asked how long fly
lives. Most of the flies Matched in
August live for a month or six weeks,
and die at the coming of frost, either VI
cold or from the attacks of fungoid
plants. A few probably winter over, and
survive until midsummer, and thus
maintain the existence Of this useful
species, to which, civilized man owes
more than he can readily estimate, and
with which he can dispense only when
the health of our cities and towns il
looked after with far greater vigilance
and intelligence than is perhaps likely
to be the case for several centuries to