for sweets, nor any relish for anything except the
blood which they suck from the pores of animals.
The house-fly is a veritable dipsomaniac:

               Busy, thirsty, curious fly,
               Thou shalt drink as well as I,

says the old convivial chant; and, in this
predilection for drink, the fly very much resembles
the toper who apostrophises him. Nothing
potable comes amiss to him—from wine to
brandy, from milk to water. Like man in
search of his gratification, little musca
continually comes to grief. At the breakfast-table
he dips into the tea or coffee cup, if he have a
chance, and is often scalded to death for his
temerity. He darts from the sugar-basin to
the cream-jug, and not unfrequently falls into
the clammy liquor and is drowned for his
greediness. Sitting alone at breakfast, one
morning, at a country inn, with nothing
particular to do, and with no newspaper or book
to read, I amused myself by extricating an
unfortunate fly from the cream into which it had
fallen, and placed it upon the tablecloth to live
or die, as fate, not I, might determine. It was
not in my power to do anything more for my
small fellow-creature. Its wings were clogged,
for the cream was not London cream. It had not
lain in this unhappy condition above a minute,
when another fly was tempted to take a look.
Whether the new comer understood the real
state of the case, or whether it was too fond of
cream to refuse to taste it, even when clotted
over the body of a moribund brother, is not
easy to decide; but putting out its little proboscis,
it began to suck vigorously at the cream.
Nor was it left alone to its enjoyment, or to its
work of mercy, whichever it may have been, for
it was speedily joined by five or six other flies,
who all sucked away so busily at the cream
on the legs, wings, and body of my little friend,
that it soon began to turn and flutter.
Ultimately it rose on its feet, rubbed its two
forelegs together, as a happy man rubs his hands,
and finally flew away as briskly as if nothing
had happened. Peter Pindar's toper would
have replaced the fly in its wet grave, as he did,
to the disgust of the company, the swarm of
flies that darkened their bowl of punch:

     Up jumped the bacchanalian crew on this,
     Taking it very much amiss,
         Swearing, and in an attitude to smite:
        "Lord," cried the man, with gravely lifted eyes,
        "Though I don't like to swallow flies,
        "I did not know but others might.'"

It is the constant thirst which besets the
fly that not only leads it into danger, but
which principally renders it so troublesome in
summer, whether to man or other animals. The
fly settles upon your hand or face, not to suck
your blood for a drink, like the mosquito, the
gnat, or the midge, and, worst of all, the
gallinipper, but simply that it may slake its thirst
at the pearly drops upon your skin—visible and
tempting to the fly, though invisible to yourself.
When bent on an object of this kind,
the perseverance of the fly is wonderful.
Nothing but death will keep it away from you.
Driven off for a moment, it returns to the
charge, brave in its ignorance. Who has often
succeeded in chasing a bluebottle into the four
corners of a pane of glass, and so catching
him? The only recorded instance of success
is that of the irascible Anglo-Indian who, in
his despair, seized a poker for the task. "I
smashed the window," he exclaimed
triumphantly, "but never mind—I killed the fly."

Naturalists tell us that the fly is stone-deaf
—in this respect unlike the bee, which swarms
to the noises made upon warming-pans or other
metallic implements. But nature is always
kind. The blind man receives compensation
in the increased power of his other senses,
especially that of touch; and in like manner our
deaf little friend, the fly, can see both behind
and before, and cannot be taken wholly
unawares. The inconvenience suffered in our
dwellings from the common house-fly is not
great in the latitude of England, unless to
grocers, butchers, and fishmongers; but in.
the middle and southern states of North
America they are often as great a plague as
mosquitoes. They tumble into your tea, your soup,
your lager-beer, your wine, your gravy; they
fasten upon every damp spot on the tablecloth
in scores and hundreds; they cover every article
of food, and defile your windows, your mirrors,
your picture-frames—everything that is bright
and shiny—and are the despair of the good
housewife. You may catch them with fly-
papers, and attract them with a light by a
very ingenious "Yankee notion," and so kill
them by countless thousands; but their numbers
never seem to diminish. Nothing but the cold
weather has any effect in staying the plague.
The weakest are killed off by myriads when
the frost comes, and the strongest betake
themselves out of sight into little holes and
corners of the walls, outside and in, or in
the bark of trees, and compose themselves
to sleep until the summer comes again. The
fly, like the dormouse, the bear, and many
other living creatures, hybernates. "Sleep,"
which Sancho Panza says "covers a man all over,
thoughts and all, like a cloak," performs the same
kindly office even for small unconsidered pests.
Sometimes a gleam of sunshine in November
or December wakes up a fly from his nap.
The rash insect thinks that summer has come
again, crawls out, shakes itself, and makes a
melancholy attempt to be lively and happy. The
adventurer generally pays with its life the
penalty of its ignorance, and never sees summer
nor lumps of sugar more.

Field-flies are not very troublesome in
England, except to horses and cattle. They are
mostly of a larger species than the domestic fly,
and are considerably more ferocious and
pertinacious. I was once coming down from the
top of Goatfell, in the Island of Arran, one of
the loveliest of the Western Isles, possessing
one of the sublimest of Scotch mountains, when
I was suddenly attacked by a cloud of flies a little
larger than the domestic fly. The cloud was