Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1875 — The Mission of the Fly. [ARTICLE]

The Mission of the Fly.

The generally-received opinion about flies is that, despite limitless ingenuity expended on patent traps and poisoned paper, they form one of those ills of life which, it not being possible entirely to cure, must perforce be endured with as good a grace as may be. Consequently when they ruin our picture-frames and ceilings, insinuate themselves into bur milk and molasses pitchers, or lull us to sleep with their drowsy buzzing, only to bite us during our slumbers and render the same uneasy, we thank fate that the cold weather will rid us of the pest. To be sure, they are scavengers in their way; but after we have spent several minutes is picking a score or more out of the butter-dish we arrive fit the conclusion that it is an open question whether they do.not spoil more good material than they carry off bad. Festindlento, good reader, hasten slowly and do not anchor faith to such opinions until you are eertain that the above sum up all of the fly’s mission in this world. Mksca domestica (science uses six syllables in Latin to exp Tess that which good round Saxon epitomizes in two) is a maligned insect. He fulfills a purpose of sufficient moment to cause you to bear his inroads into your morning nap with equanimity, or even complacently to view him Congregated by the score within your hidden sweets..

Did you ever watph a fly who has just alighted after soaring about the room for some little time? He goes through a series of operations which remind you of a cat licking herself after a meal, or of a bird pluming its feathers. First, the bind feet are rubbed together, then each hind leg is passed over a wing, then the forelegs undergo a like treatment; and lastly, if you look sharp you will see the insect carrv his proboscis oyer his legs and about kis body as far as he can reach. Hie minute trunk is perfectly retractile and it terminates in two large lobes, which you can see spread out when the insect begins a meal on a lump of sugar. Now the rubbing together of legs and wings may be a smoothing operation; but for what purpose hi this carefully going over the body with the trunk, especially when that organ is not fitted for licking, butsimply for grasping and sucking up food?

This query, which perhaps may have suggested itself to thousands, has recently for the first time been answered by a Mr. Emerson, an English chemist; and certainly, in the light of the revelations of that gentleman’s investigations, the fly assumes the position of an important friend instead of a pest to mankind. Mr. Emerson states that he began his self-appointed task of finding out whether the house-fly .really serves any appreciable purpose in the scheme of creattefeoxcepting as an indifferent scavenger, by capturing a fine specimen and gluing his wings down to a microscope slide. On placing the slide under the instrument, to the investigator’s disgust, the fly appeared covered with lice, causing the offending insect to be promptly released and another substituted iu his place. Fly No. 2 was no better off than fly No. 1, and as the same might be predicated of flies 3,4,5 (or o| n flies, as the algebras have it), Mr. Emerson con-

eluded that here was something which at once required looking into. Why were the flies lousy? Meanwhile fly No. 2, on the slide, seemed to take his posi tion very coolly, and extending his proboscis began to sweep it over his body as if he had just alighted: A glance through the microscope, however, showed that the operation was not one of selfbeautification ; for wherever the lice were, there the trank went. The lice were disappearing into the trank; the fly was eating them. Up to this time, the investigator had treatedhis specimen as of the masculine gender; but now he changes his mind ana concludes it to be a female, busily devouring not lice but her own progeny. The flies then carry their young about them; and when the family get too numerous or the mother too hungry, the offspring are eaten.' Awhile reasoning thus, Mr. Etoerson picked up a scrap of white writing paper, from which two flies appeared to be busily eating something, and put it under the instrument. There were the progeny again oh (he paper rad easily rubbed off with a cloth. “ This,” he says, “ set me thinking. I took the paper into the kitchen again 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. 1 had now arrived at something definite; they were not the progeny of the fly, but animalcules floating in the air, and the quick motions Of the flies gathered them 6n their bodies and the flies then went Into some quiet corner to hare their daintv meal.” ? The investigator goes on to describe how he continued the experiment in a

. 1 iUL. L ... = 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 bedrooms or well-ventilated, clean apartments, Were miserably lean and entirely free from their prey. Wherever filth existed, evolving garma which might generate disease, there were the flies, covering themselves with the minute organisms and greedily devouring the same. Mr. Emerson, while thus proving the utility of ihe fly, has added another and lower link to that ewriouu and necessary (drain of destruction which exist* in animated nature. These infinitesimal animacules form food for the flies, the flies for the spiders, the spiders for the birds, the birds for the quadrupeds, and so on up to the last of the series, serving the same purpose to man. He certainly deserves credit for an interesting and novel investigation and for an intelligent discernment which might even attack the more difficult task of teaching us the uses—for nature makes nothing without, some beneficial end—of the animalcules themselves.— Scientific American.