Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1876 — The Life of the House-Fly. [ARTICLE]

The Life of the House-Fly.

The commonest insect on onr continent is the house-fly (Musea domeetica) ; and yet how many know, its life-history 1 Everybody is familiar with its habits in the adult state, when it buzzes noisily around sleeping and living-rooms, wherever it can penetrate, ana torments the most patient spirit with its restlessly-imper-tinent, meddlesome disposition. Yet ask where it waa born and bred, and what sort of a life it had prior to its appearance on the scene, full-grown and equipped pa a two-winged and six-legged bandit and skirmisher, and the answer will probably amount, in the sum of its information, to a cipher. It is only very lately that naturalists 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 accottnt bf his in-i vestigations into the subject, wTiiah were pursued two summers ago. This observer placed a house-fly in a glass bottle, where she was secure and yet visible; and in fourteen hours noticed that she had depose ited ISO eggs. These were long, slender and cylindrical, and a 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 hatched, and the young maggots were crawling around in

quest of something to eat. Agam; th 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 surface; and thus thqir young? were under the eye of the naturalist in all stages of their development. * I The shell of the egg is so dense that the changes of the embryo are hid-from view, but in twenty-faur hours the young maggot was ready to come out. Those hatched in confinement were four or five hours later, and the young were amaller. When one day old, the maggots went through. the process of molting; and when two da} s or two days and a half old, repeated the process. Alter the second molting they lived three or four days, and then sassed into the pupa or chrysalis state, n this dormant condition they alept for from five to seven days, and thefi, pushings off the en<r of the pupa case, emerged in the form of a house-fly, course* through the air and alight on some human nose, to tickle it intolerably with their 1 fast-playing feet, or to dip into flghne dish' of enticing 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 , a good deal of mental and quite dazed by the new world of liff ana light about it; for, as a maggot it Was bind, deaf and dumb. NW'its wings ate soft, 1 small, baggy and haif 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 and light-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 concerning more trivial and less absorbing mat*, ters, we are assured by Sir John Lubbock, who says that the sounds of insects do net merely Serve to bring the sexes together; they are not merely * love songs,’ but also serve, like any true language, to express the feelings.*’ j ' The life of & house-fly tap Jp-Aqgust is generally closed in from foqg to six weeks, and is cut off by the frost or by the attacksof fungus plants. Afewprobably survive until the ensuing summer, and these serve to perpetuate the spedies, The house-fly of America i% supposed to be identical with the house-fijrbf Europe.