Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1879 — The Fly’s Proboscis. [ARTICLE]

The Fly’s Proboscis.

Professor George Macloskie, of Princeton College, read a paper before the New York Academy of Sciences last evening on “The Proboscis of the House-Fly.” The wall behind the desk at which the Professor stood was decorated for the occasion with diagrams showing highly magnified sections of the bod}' of the common house-fly, or Musca domesticus. There were also some pictures of exaggerated cockroaches, and a representation of an enormous lobster, more than three feet long—so large, in fact, that the teeth in his “ spoon-shaped jaws” could be distinctly seen. As for the picture of that instrument of torture, the proboscis of the house-fly, it resembled both in shape and size a rifle with the barrel .broken oft’where it meets the stock, and a large warty jxitnto stuck on. The potato would represent what some naturalists call the “tip,” and what others call the t'knob,” of the proboscis. Professor Macloskie declared that it was a mistake to say that flies bite, the testi-

mony of all mankind to the oontrary notwithstanding. They didn't bite — they only filed. It was for along time said by naturalists that this knob at tbe end of the fly’s proboscis was made up of muscular tissue, by which the owner ■ was enabled to rub his teeth, so to speak, into the flesh of suffering humanity. Later investigation had demonstrated the fact that this knob was made up principally of small rods, the sharp enas of which projected a little beyond the end, making a surface similar to that of a very sharp and effective file. Tbe lecturer went on to describe just how the flies go to work to file a person’s face. Having discovered a minute speck of something palatable, tbe fly first dropped a little saliva upon it to moisten or dissolve the dainty morsel. This done, he went to work with his file, executing a movement like that of the snout of a pig when rooting up the earth. Having gathered up enough for a " swallow,” Tie drew up his proboscis, emptied the food into his mouth and chewed it. To prove that flies had teeth, although they were so located as not to enable him to bite any external object, the Professor passed around a specimen of a fly’s jaw adjusted under the objective glass of a microscope, and showing off the fly’s back teeth to great advantage. The mosquito’s apparatus was very different. That interesting New Jersey bird was provided with a number of laneelets set in among a system of sucking tubes. This enabled it to bore for blood and draw it up at the same time. Professor Macloskie said he had made a new discovery in the anatomy of a fly’s proboscis. He had found two small tendons attached to the knob on one end and running back to the other end, where they were attached to the hard tissue of the thorax. These tendons also represented the endocraniura in tbe head of the ily, a part hitherto supposed by Huxley and others to be absent, although it was known that the lobster and the cockroach had cudocrania.—N. Y. World.