certainly a cube of fifteen or twenty feet, and must
have contained millions of flies. They followed
me for miles in my progress down the mountain
towards the little hostelry of Brodick, and
fastened upon every exposed part of face and neck,
to drink in the moisture that hard exercise had
brought out over all the surface of my body. I
unloosed my plaid from my shoulders to swing
it around me like a flail to scare away the
invaders. In vain! In vain! One down, a
thousand came on! I clapped my hands
together in the midst of the cloud, and slew my
hundreds at every coming together of my palms.
It was of no use. You can't frighten a fly,
you can only kill him. On they came—on,
for ever on, like the rushing of Niagara! At
last I struck into a belt of plantation, thickly
wooded with fir and larch, where my tormentors
seemed to lose their way; for in five minutes I
was disembarrassed of them, much to my
satisfaction. Since that time I have learned to
sympathise with horses in vehicles pursued by
flies for miles, in defiance of the whip of the
driver; and to admire the friendly arrangement
of two horses in a field. "Stand with
your haunches towards my head," says Dobbin
to Bobbin, "and brush, away the flies
from my ears with your beautiful long
tail, and I will do the same good turn for
you." "Agreed," says Bobbin to Dobbin; and
so they stand for hours under the shadow of trees
in the sultry summer heats, mutually helpful,
and doubtless quite aware of the convenience
as well as fairness of the bargain.

The first great use of all flies in the
economy of nature seems to be to act the
part of scavengers, and consume the
decaying animal matters, or excretions, that are
not good above ground—though they would
be excellent under ground, if it were worth
any one's while to put them there. The next
is, that they shall supply food for birds and
fishes. What is the use of the ephemera?
They are born, grow old, and die in one day;
they seem to do nothing in their short lifetime
but dance in the sunshine, as if there were not
a particle of sorrow in their little world—a
large world enough for them.

A singular circumstance has lately been
reported by scientific men on the subject of
the domestic fly of Europe and America.
Everybody knows that the civilised man is,
and always has been, more than a match for
the savage; and that before the continually
encroaching steps of the Anglo-Saxon and other
European races—but more especially the Anglo-
Saxon and Scandinavian—the aborigines of the
American continent, of the Cape of Good Hope,
of Australia, and New Zealand, have been
gradually disappearing. If two races refuse to
amalgamate, the weaker goes to the wall.
Civilisation is too much for them, and they
retire from its presence only to linger a
little while in the land of their fathers,
conscious of their inferiority, and driven to the
grave at last. That this should happen in the
case of men is not very surprising, but that it
should happen in the case of house-flies, is not
a little remarkable. Dr. Haast, a Fellow of the
Linnaean Society, writes to Dr. J. D. Hooker,
from New Zealand, that not only does the
European drive away the Maori or aboriginal
inhabitant, but that the European house-fly drives
away the New Zealand fly. Of two evils, New
Zealand colonists prefer the lesser, and as the
spread of the European insect goes on slowly,
they are actually importing house-flies in boxes
and bottles to their new inland stations.
Is it that all living things that are much in
the society of, or in immediate contiguity to
man in a high state of civilisation, have their
faculties sharpened by the association—
sharpened, as it were, by danger, and the necessity
of protecting themselves against such formidable
foes. Is it that similar animals and insects in wild
countries, where men are few, are not so highly
educated by adverse circumstances, not so
acute, clever, and wary; and that when superiors
of their own race are brought into contact
with them, the weaker flies before the stronger,
as we see it among men?

Enough for the present on the subject of the
fly. To please my wife, I turn to the mosquito, a
creature which has not yet made its appearance
in the British Isles (it is to be hoped it never
will), but which has several near relations
amongst us in the culex family, of which the
gnat and the midge are the best known
members. Mosquito is a Spanish word signifying
a little fly. Though it be little, it makes up
for deficiency of size by abundance of venom.
Some of the fairest portions of the globe are
rendered all but uninhabitable by these "pesky"
insects. The mosquito, and his big brother the
gallinipper, which is said to be able to sting into
your leg through the leather of your jack-boot,
though they do not altogether banish mankind
from the warmer countries of the temperate
zone, render those regions particularly
uncomfortable in the summer days, and, above all, in
the summer nights, when they not only "murder
sleep," but in the woods have sometimes been
known to murder sleepers.

Let me ask the reader to accompany me, in
spirit, to a little cottage which I once occupied
in Staten Island, near New York—one of the
most compact and beautiful spots that the sun
shines upon—and hear what is to be said about
"skeeters," as many Americans call the
mosquito for shortness. The cottage is a "frame"
or wooden one, substantially built for winter as
well as for summer habitation, and with a broad
verandah in the front and on the eastern side, on
which some English people—myself and wife
among the number—and some Americans are
seated in the cool of the evening. Before the
verandah extends a flower-garden, beautifully
laid out, and a reach of ground sloping for about a
mile towards the Atlantic. Behind it are three
acres of forest land; two of which are almost in the
condition of the aboriginal wilderness, and
contain some stately fir-trees, under the shadow of
which the Red Indians may have erected their
wigwams, smoked the calumet of peace, or dug