The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1877-01-05
THE HoUsg.rLY.
Interesting Facts CONCERNING this Pestif
4 kt D. er0u Insect. 20 esrr1rE

4
| A erou Insect. @~ olEgl
| The commonest insect on our CONT
nent is the house fly (1fusca dontestfco),
and vet how many know its life-history
Everybody is familiar with its habits in
the adult state, when it buzzes noisily
around sleeping and living-rooms, where
ever it can penetrate, and torments the
most patient spirit with its restlessly-
impertinent, meddlesome disposition.
Yet ask where it was born and bred, and
what sort of life it had prior to its ap-
pearance on the scene, fullgrown and
equipped as q two-winged and six
legged bandit and skirmisher, and the
answer will probably amount, in the
sum of it's information, to a cipher. 1t
is only very lately that naturalists have
learned its mode of growth; therefore
common folks are excusable for lgno-
rance of it's complete career.
In the American Naturalist, M. A. 5.
Packard, Jr., gives an account OF his in
vestigations into the subject, which We're
pursued two summers ago. This OBJ
server placed q house-fy in glass bot
tie, where she was secure and yet visible;
and in fourteen hours noted that she had
deposited 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 bot
tom 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 the observer placed some
fresh horse-manure at an open window
in the sun, and added new masses from
time to time during several weeks. This,
being suited to their needs, attracted
numbers of flies, which deposited eggs
in the cracks and crevices or on the sur.
face; and thus their young were under
the eye of the naturalist in all stages of
their development.
The shell of the egg is 80 dense that
the changes of the embryo are hid from
view, but in twenty four hours the young
maggot 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 noting and,
when two days or two days and a half
old, repeated the process. After the
second molting they lived three or four
days, and passed into the pupa or chrys-
ais 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
house-fy, ready to course through the
air and alight on some human nose, to
tickle it intolerably with their fast-pliy-
ing feet, or to dip into some dish of en-
ticing sweets and suck their fill of it.
"When free from its prison" says
Mr.. Packard, "the fly walks, or rather
runs, nervously about, as if laboring
under good deal of mental excitement,
and quite dazed by the new world of
life and light about it; for, as a maggot,
it was blind. deaf and dumb. Now its
wings are soft, small. baggy, and 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 buzz of contentment aud
light-heartedness born of its mercurial
temperament. That the fly not only
throws off, in its buzz, songs OF the af-
fections, love ditties, but also may vary
its notes accordingly as it is elevated or
depressed in spirits concerning more
trivial and less absorbing matters, 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"
The life of house-fy 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
probably survive until the ensuing sum-
mer, and these serve to perpetuate
the species. The house-fy of America
is supposed to be Identical With the
house-fy of Europe.