ORDER IX.
DIPTERA.
Culicidæ—Gnats.928
Concerning the generation of Gnats, Moufet says: “Countrey people suppose them, and that not improbably, to be procreated from some corrupt moisture of the earth.”929
A battle of Gnats (probably an appearance of Ephemera) is recorded in Stow’s Chronicles of England, p. 509, to have been fought in the reign of King Richard II.: “A fighting among Gnats at the King’s maner of Shine, where they were so thicke gathered, that the aire was darkened with them: they fought and made a great battaile. Two partes of them being slayne, fel downe to the grounde; the thirde parte hauing got the victorie, flew away, no man knew whither. The number of the deade was such that they might be swept uppe with besomes, and bushels filled weyth them.”930
In the year 1736 the Gnats, Culex pipiens, were so numerous in England, that, as it is recorded, vast columns of them were seen to rise in the air from the steeple of the cathedral at Salisbury, which, at a little distance resembling columns of smoke, occasioned many people to think the edifice was on fire.931 At Sagan, in Silesia, in July, 1812, a similar occurrence gave rise in like manner to an alarm that the church was on fire.932 In May of the following year at Norwich, at about six o’clock in the evening, the inhabitants of that city were alarmed by the appearance of smoke issuing from the upper window of the spire of the cathedral, for which at the time no satisfactory account could be given, but which was most probably produced by the same cause.933 And in the year 1766, in the month of August, they appeared in such incredible numbers at Oxford as to resemble a black cloud, darkening the air and almost intercepting the rays of the sun. Mr. John Swinton mentions, that in the evening of the 20th, about half an hour before sunset, he was in the garden of Wadham College, when he saw six columns of these insects ascending from the tops of six boughs of an apple-tree, two in a perpendicular, three in an oblique direction, and one in a pyramidal form, to the height of fifty or sixty feet. Their bite was so envenomed, that it was attended by violent and alarming inflammation; and one when killed usually contained as much blood as would cover three or four square inches of wall.934 A similar column, of two or three feet in diameter and about twenty feet in height, was seen at eight o’clock in the evening of Sunday, July 14th, 1833, in Kensington Gardens. The upper portion of the column being curved to the east, the whole resembled the letter J inverted. The Gnats in every part of the column were in the liveliest motion.935 The author of the “Faerie Queene” seems to have witnessed the like curious phenomenon, which furnished him with the following beautiful simile:
Ligon, in his History of Barbados, makes the following curious observation relative to a species of insects which he calls “Flyes,” but which are more probably Gnats or Mosquitoes: “There is not only a race of all these kinds, that go in a generation, but upon new occasions, new kinds; as, after a great downfall of rain, when the ground has been extremely moistened, and softened with the water, I have walk’d out upon a dry walk (which I made my self) in an evening, and there came about me an army of such Flyes, as I had never seen before, nor after; and they rose, as I conceived, out of the earth: They were as big bodied as Bees, but far larger wings, harm they did us none, but only lighted on us; their colour between ash-colour and purple.”936
If Gnats swarm in the summer in globular masses, it is supposed to prognosticate a storm. Moufet says: “If Gnats near sunset do play up and down in open air, they presage heat; if in the shade, warm and milde showers; but if they altogether sting those that passe by them, then expect cold weather and very much rain.… If any one would finde water either in a hill or valley, let him observe (saith Paxanus in Geoponika) the sun rising, and where the Gnats whirle round in form of an obelisk, underneath there is water to be found. Yea, if Apomasaris deceive us not, dreams of Gnats do foretell news of war or a disease, and that so much the more dangerous as it shall be apprehended to approach the more principall parts of the body.”937
“On the 14th of December, 1830, at Oremburg, snow fell accompanied by a multitude of small black Gnats, whose motions were similar to those of a flea.” This singular phenomenon was described at the session of the Academy of St. Petersburg, held February 21st, 1831.938
The pertinacity of the Culicidæ frequently renders them a most formidable pest. Humboldt tells us “that between the little harbor of Higuerote and the mouth of the Rio Unare, the wretched inhabitants are accustomed to stretch themselves on the ground, and pass the night buried in the sand three or four inches deep, exposing only the head, which they cover with a handkerchief.”939 As another proof of the terrible state to which man is sometimes reduced by Mosquitoes, Captain Stedman relates that in one of his dreadful marches, the clouds of them were such, that the soldiers dug holes with their bayonets in the earth, into which they thrust their heads, stopping the entry and covering their necks with their hammocks, while they lay with their bellies on the ground: to sleep in any other position was absolutely impossible. He himself, by a negro’s advice, climbed to the top of the highest tree he could find, and there slung his hammock among the boughs, and slept exalted nearly a hundred feet above his companions, “whom,” says he, “I could not see for the myriads of mosquitoes below me, nor even hear, from the incessant buzzing of these troublesome insects.”940
“The Gnats in America,” says Moufet, “do so plash and cut, that they will pierce through very thick clothing; so that it is excellent sport to behold how ridiculously the barbarous people, when they are bitten, will skip and frisk, and slap with their hands their thighs, buttocks, shoulders, arms, and sides, even as a carter doth his horses.”941 Isaac Weld tells us that “these insects were so powerful and bloodthirsty that they actually pierced through General Washington’s boots.”942 They probably crept within the boots, but the story is not incredible if we believe Moufet. This naturalist says: “In Italy, near the Po, great store and very great ones are to be seen, terrible for biting, and venomous, piercing through a thrice-doubled stocking, and boots likewise (morsu crudeles et venenati, triplices caligas, imo ocreas, item perforantes), sometimes leaving behind them impoysoned, hard, blue tumours, sometimes painful bladders, sometimes itching pimples, such as Hippocrates hath observed in his Epidemics, in the body of one Cyrus, a fuller, being frantic.”943
The poet Spenser, in his View of Ireland, says the Irish “goe all naked except a mantle, which is a fit house for an outlaw—a meet bed for a rebel—and an apt cloak for a thiefe. It coucheth him strongly against the Gnats, which, in that country, doe more to annoy the naked rebels, and doe more sharply wound them, than all their enemies’ swords and speares, which can seldom come nigh them.”
Stewart says that the negroes of Jamaica, who cannot afford mosquito-nets, get into a mechanical habit of driving away these troublesome nocturnal visitors, that even when apparently wrapt in profound sleep, there is a continual movement of the hands.944
Herodotus says: “The means devised by the Egyptians to avoid the Gnats, which swarm in prodigious numbers, are these: Those who reside at some elevation above the marshes, avail themselves of towers which they ascend to sleep; for the Gnats, to avoid the winds, do not fly high. While those who dwell on the very margins of the marshes, instead of towers, practise another contrivance. Every man possesses a net, which, during the day, he employs in catching fish, and which at night he uses as his bed-chamber, where he places it over his couch, and so sleeps within it. For if any one,” he concludes, “sleeps wrapped in a cloak or cloth, the Gnats will bite him through it; but they never attempt to penetrate the net.”945 With regard to the conclusion of Herodotus, that nets with meshes will effectually exclude Gnats, Tennent says he has “been satisfied by painful experience that (if the theory be not altogether fallacious) at least the modern mosquitoes of Ceylon are uninfluenced by the same considerations which restrained those of the Nile under the successors of Cambyses.”946
Jackson complains that after a fifty-miles journey in Africa, the Gnats would not suffer him to rest, and that his hands and face appeared, from their bites, as if he was infected with the small-pox in its worst stage.947 Dr. Clarke relates that in the neighborhood of the Crimea, the Russian soldiers are obliged to sleep in sacks to defend themselves from the mosquitoes; and even this, he adds, is not a sufficient security, for several of them die in consequence of mortification produced by these furious blood-suckers.948
When we consider these circumstances, it is not incredible that the army of Julian the Apostate should be so fiercely attacked by these insects as to be driven back; or that the inhabitants of various cities, as Mouffet has collected from different authors,949 should, by an extraordinary multiplication of this plague, have been compelled to desert them. Also the latter part of the following story, related by Theodoret, seems entitled to belief: When Sapor, King of Persia, says this historian, was besieging the Roman City of Nisibis in the year 360, James, Bishop of that city, ascended one of the towers, and “prayed that Flies and Gnats might be sent against the Persian hosts, that so they might learn from these small insects the great power of Him who protected the Romans.” Scarcely had the Bishop concluded his prayer, continues Theodoret, when swarms of Flies and Gnats appeared like clouds, so that the trunks of the elephants were filled with them, as also were the ears and nostrils of the horses and of the other beasts of burden; and that, not being able to get rid of these insects, the elephants and horses threw their riders, broke the ranks, left the army, and fled away with the utmost speed; and this, he concludes, compelled the Persians to raise the siege.950
“As the Cossacks of the Black Sea are no agriculturists,” says Jaeger, “but derive their subsistence from their numerous herds of horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and hogs, they suffer immensely, at times, from the ravages of the mosquitoes. Although they are fortunately not seen every year, these blood-suckers may be considered a real Egyptian plague among the herds of these Cossacks; for they soon transform the most delightful plains into a mournful, solitary desert, killing all the beasts, and completely stripping the fields of every animated creature. One thousand of these insatiate tormentors enter the nostrils, ears, eyes, and mouth of the cattle, who shortly after die in convulsions, or from secondary inflammation, or from absolute suffocation. In the small town of Elizabethpol alone, during the month of June, thirty horses, forty foals, seventy oxen, ninety calves, a hundred and fifty hogs, and four hundred sheep were killed by these flies.”951
Ammianus Marcellinus, in his Roman History, treating of the wild beasts in Mesopotamia, gives us the following curious zoological theory on the destruction of lions by mosquitoes:
“The lions wander in countless droves among the beds of rushes on the banks of the rivers of Mesopotamia, and in the jungles, and lie quiet all the winter, which is very mild in that country. But when the warm weather returns, as these regions are exposed to great heat, they are forced out by the vapours, and by the size of the Gnats, with swarms of which every part of that country is filled. And these winged insects attack the eyes, as being both moist and sparkling, sitting on and biting the eyelids; the lions, unable to bear the torture, are either drowned in the rivers, to which they flee for refuge, or else, by frequent scratchings, tear their eyes out themselves with their claws, and then become mad. And if this did not happen, the whole of the East would be overrun with beasts of this kind.”952
I have never heard of mosquitoes being turned to any good account save in California; and there, it seems, according to Rev. Walter Colton, they are sometimes made the ministers of justice. A rogue had stolen a bag of gold from a digger in the mines, and hid it. Neither threats nor persuasions could induce him to reveal the place of its concealment. He was at last sentenced to a hundred lashes, and then informed that he would be let off with thirty, provided he would tell what he had done with the gold; but he refused. The thirty lashes were administered, but he was still stubborn as a mule. He was then stripped naked, and tied to a tree. The mosquitoes with their long bills went at him, and in less than three hours he was covered with blood. Writhing and trembling from head to foot with exquisite torture, he exclaimed, “Untie me, untie me, and I will tell where it is.” “Tell first,” was the reply. So he told where it might be found. Then some of the party with wisps kept off the still hungry mosquitoes, while others went where the culprit directed, and recovered the bag of gold. He was then untied, washed with cold water, and helped to his clothes, while he muttered, as if talking to himself, “I couldn’t stand that anyhow.”953
The largest kind of mosquito in the valley of the lower Mississippi is called the “Gallinipper.” It is peculiarly described, by the boatmen, to be as large as a goose, and that it flies about at night with a brickbat under its wings with which it sharpens its “sting.”
They tell a good story to show the superiority of the Gallinipper, over the ordinary Mosquito, in this wise. Some fellow made a bet that, for a certain length of time, he could stand the stings of the mosquitoes inflicted upon his bare back while he lay on his face. He stripped himself for the ordeal, and was bearing it manfully, when some mischievous spectator threw a live coal of fire on him. He winced, and, looking up by way of protest, exclaimed, “I bar (debar) the Gallinipper.”
The Culicidæ, say Kirby and Spence, like other conquerors who have been the torment of the human race, have attained to fame, and have given their names to bays, towns, and even to considerable territories; and instance Mosquito Bay in St. Christopher’s; Mosquito, a town in the Island of Cuba; and the Mosquito Shore of Central America.954
Democritus says: “Horse-hair, stretched through the door, and through the middle of the house, destroys Gnats.”955
St. Macarius, Alban Butler says, was a confectioner of Alexandria, who, in the flower of his age, spent upwards of sixty years in the deserts in labor, penance, and contemplation. “Our Saint,” continues Butler, “happened one day to inadvertently kill a Gnat that was biting him in his cell; reflecting that he had lost the opportunity of suffering that mortification, he hastened from the cell for the marshes of Scete, which abound with great flies, whose stings pierce even wild boars. There he continued six months, exposed to those ravaging insects; and to such a degree was his whole body disfigured by them with sores and swellings, that when he returned he was only to be known by his voice.”956
In the old English translation of the Bible, the observation of our Saviour to the Pharisees, “Ye blind guides, which strain at a Gnat, and swallow a camel,” is rendered “which strain out a Gnat,” and Bishop Pearce observes that this is conformable to the sense of the passage. An allusion is made to the custom which prevailed in Oriental countries of passing their wine and other liquors through a strainer, that no Gnats or flies might get into the cup. In the Fragments to Calmet, we are informed that there is a modern Arabic proverb to this effect, “He swallowed an elephant, but was strangled by a fly.”957
Tipulidæ—Crane-flies.
The larvæ of a species of Agaric-Gnat (Mycetophila) live in society, and emigrate in files in a very soldier-like manner. First goes one, next follow two, then three, etc., so as to exhibit a singular serpentine appearance. The common people of Germany call this file heerwurm, and, it is said, view them with great dread, regarding them as ominous of war.958
Maupertuis, in describing his ascent to Mount Pulinga, in Lapland, says: “They had to fell a whole wood of large trees, and the Flies (most probably Tipulidæ) attack’d ’em with that fury, that the very soldiers, tho’ harden’d to the greatest fatigues, were obliged to rap up their faces, or cover them with tar. These insects poison’d their victuals, for no sooner was a dish serv’d, but it was quite covered with them.”959 Maupertuis, in another place, says: “These Flies make Lapland less tolerable in the summer than the cold does in the winter.”960 The severity with which the Tipulidæ torment the Laplanders is attested also by Acerby,961 Linnæus,962 De Geer,963 and Reaumur.964
Muscidæ—Flies.
Among the instances recorded of Flies appearing in immense numbers, the following are the most remarkable:
“When the Creole frigate was lying in the outer roads of Buenos Ayres, in 1819, at a distance of six miles from the land, her decks and rigging were suddenly covered with thousands of Flies and grains of sand. The sides of the vessel had just received a fresh coat of paint, to which the insects adhered in such numbers as to spot and disfigure the vessel, and to render it necessary partially to renew the paint. Capt. W. H. Smyth was obliged to repaint his vessel, the Adventure, in the Mediterranean, from the same cause. He was on his way from Malta to Tripoli, when a southern wind blowing from the coast of Africa, then one hundred miles distant, drove such myriads of Flies upon the fresh paint that not the smallest point was left unoccupied by the insects.”965
“In May, 1699, at Kerton,” records Mrs. Thoresby, p. 15, “in Lincolnshire, the sky seemed to darken north-westward at a little distance from the town, as though it had been a shower of hailstones or snow; but when it came near the town, it appeared to be a prodigious swarm of Flies, which went with such a force toward the south-east that persons were forced to turn their backs of them.”966
On the morning of the 17th of September, 1831, a small dipterous insect, belonging to Meigen’s genus Chlorops, and nearly allied to, if not identical with, his C. læta, appeared suddenly, and in such immense quantities, in one of the upper rooms of the Provost’s Lodge, in King’s College, Cambridge, that the greater part of the ceiling toward the window of the room was so thickly covered as not to be visible. They entered by a window looking due north, while the wind was blowing steadily N. N. W. So it appears they came from the direction of the River Cam, or rather came with its current.967
In the summer of 1834, which season was remarkable in England for its swarms and shoals of insects, the air was constantly filled, says a writer in The Mirror, with millions of small delicate Flies, and the sea in many places, particularly on the Norfolk coasts, was perfectly blackened by the amazing shoals. The length of these masses was not determined; but they were, it is asserted, at least a league broad. It is said the oldest fishermen of those seas never remembered having seen or heard of such a phenomenon.968
Capt. Dampier calls the natives of New Holland the “poor winking people of New Holland,” and concludes his description of them with the following observations: “Their eyelids are always half closed, to keep the Flies out of their eyes, they being so troublesome here that no fanning will keep them from coming to one’s face; and without the assistance of both hands to keep them off they will creep into one’s nostrils, and mouth, too, if the lips are not shut very close. So that from their infancy, being thus annoyed with these insects, they do never open their eyes as other people, and therefore they cannot see far, unless they hold up their heads, as if they were looking at something over them.”969
In a house at Zaffraan-craal, Dr. Sparrman suffered so much from the common House-fly, Musca domestica, which, in the south of Africa, frequently appears in such prodigious numbers as to cover almost entirely the walls and ceilings, that, as he asserts, it was impossible for him to keep within doors for any length of time. To get rid of these troublesome pests, the natives resort to a very ingenious contrivance. It is thus related by the above-mentioned traveler: “Bunches of herbs are hung up all over the ceiling, on which the Flies settle in great numbers; a person then takes a linen net or bag, of a considerable depth, fixed to a long handle, and, inclosing in it every bunch, shakes it about, so that the Flies fall down to the bottom of the bag: when, after several applications of it in this manner, they are killed by a pint or a quart at a time, by dipping the bag into scalding hot water.”970
Rhasis, Avicen, and Albertus say: “Bury the tail of a wolf in the house, and the Flies will not come into it.”971
Berytius says: “Flies will never rest on dumb animals if they are rubbed with the fat of a lion.”972
Pliny says: “At Rome yee shall not have a Flie or dog that will enter into the chappell of Hercules standing in the beast market.”973
Plutarch, in the Eighth Book of his Symposiaques, learnedly discourses upon the tamableness of the Fly. His opinion is that it cannot be tamed.974
Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, says: “Many ways doth nature also by Flies play with the fancies of men in dreams, if we may credit Apomasaris in his Apotelesms. For the Indians, Persians, and Ægyptians do teach, that if Flies appear to us in our sleep, it doth signifie an herauld at arms, or an approaching disease. If a general of an army, or a chief commander, dream that at such or such a place he should see a great company of Flies, in that very place, wherever it shall be, there he shall be in anguish and grief for his soldiers that are slain, his army routed, and the victory lost. If a mean or ordinary man dream the like, he shall fall into a violent fever, which likely may cost him his life. If a man dream in his sleep that Flies went into his mouth or nostrils, he is to expect with great sorrow and grief imminent destruction from his enemies.”975
In an English North country chap-book, entitled the Royal Dream-book, we find: “To dream of Flies or other vermin, denotes enemies of all sorts.”976
“When we see,” says Hollingshed, “a great number of Flies in a yeare, we naturallie iudge it like to be a great plague.”977
Among the deep-sea fishermen of Greenock (Scotland), there is a most comical idea that if a Fly falls into a glass from which any one has been drinking, or is about to drink, it is considered a sure omen of good luck to the drinker, and is always noticed as such by the company.978 Has this any connection with our saying of “taking a glass with a fly in it?”
If Flies die in great numbers in a house, it is believed by the common people to be a sure sign of death to some one in the family occupying it; if throughout the country, an omen of general pestilence. It is positively asserted that Flies always die before the breaking out of the cholera, and believed that they die of this disease.
Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, says: “When the Flies bite harder than ordinary, making at the face and eyes of men, they foretell rain or wet weather, from whence Politian hath it:
Perhaps before rain they are most hungry, and therefore, to asswage their hunger, do more diligently seek after their food. This also is to be observed, that a little before a showre or a storme comes, the Flies descend from the upper region of the air to the lowest, and do fly, as it were, on the very surface of the earth. Moreover, if you see them very busie about sweet-meats or unguents, you may know that it will presently be a showre. But if they be in all places many and numerous, and shall so continue long (if Alexander Benedict and Johannes Damascenus say true), they foretell a plague or pestilence, because so many of them could not be bred of a little putrefaction of the air.”979 Elsewhere Moufet states: “Neither are Flies begotten of dung only, but of any other filthy matter putrefied by heat in the summer time, and after the same way spoken of before, as Grapaldus and Lonicerus have very well noted.”980
Willsford, in his Nature’s Secrets, p. 135, says: “Flies in the spring or summer season, if they grow busier or blinder than at other times, or that they are observed to shroud themselves in warm places, expect then quickly to follow either hail, cold storms of rain, or very much wet weather; and if these little creatures are noted early in autumn to repair into their winter quarters, it presages frosty mornings, cold storms, with the approach of hoary winter. Atomes of Flies swarming together, and sporting themselves in the sunbeams, is a good omen of fair weather.”981
In Gayton’s Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654, p. 99, speaking of Sancho Panza’s having converted a cassock into a wallet, our pleasant annotator observes: “It was serviceable, after this greasie use, for nothing but to preach at a carnivale or Shrove Tuesday, and to tosse Pancakes in after the exercise; or else, if it could have been conveighed thither, nothing more proper for a man that preaches the Cook’s sermon at Oxford, when that plump society rides upon their governour’s horses to fetch in the Enemie, the Flie.” That there was such a custom at Oxford, let Peshall, in his history of that city, be a voucher, who, speaking of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, p. 280, says: “To this Hospital cooks from Oxford flocked, bringing in on Whitsun-week the Fly.” Aubrey saw this ceremony performed in 1642. He adds: “On Michaelmas-day, they rode thither again to carry the Fly away.”982
Plutarch, in his disquisition on the Art of Discerning a Flatterer from a Friend, makes the following curious comparison: “The Gad-Flie (as they say) which useth to plague bulles and oxen, setteth about their eares, and so doth the tick deal by dogges: after the same manner, flatterers take hold of ambitious mens eares, and possesse them with praises; and being once set fast there, hardly are they to be removed and chased away.”983
Plautus twice compares envious and inquisitive persons to Flies.984
In a narrative of unheard-of Popish cruelties toward Protestants beyond Seas, printed in 1680, we find the insinuating detectives of the Spanish Inquisition under the name of Flies.985
Flies are mentioned somewhere in Lyndwood as the emblem of unclean thoughts.986
Flies were driven away when a woman was in labor, for fear she should bring forth a daughter.987
Flies are found represented in the pottery of the ancient Egyptians.988
Flies (Cuspi) were sacrificed to the Sun by the ancient Peruvians.989
“To let a Flee (Fly) stick i’ the wa’” is, in Scotland, not to speak on some particular topic, to pass it over without remark.990
“Certes, a strange thing it is of these Flies,” says Pliny, “which are taken to be as senselesse and witlesse creatures, yea, and of as little capacity and understanding as any other whatsoever: and yet at the solemne games and plaies holden every fifth yeare at Olympia, no sooner is the bull sacrificed there to the Idoll or god of the Flies called Myiodes, but a man shall see (a wonderful thing to tell) infinit thousand of flies depart out of that territorie by flights, as it were thick clouds.”991
This Myiodes or Maagrus, the “Fly-catcher,” was the name of a hero, invoked at Aliphera, at the festivals of Athena, as the protector against Flies. It was also a surname of Hercules.
The following rendering of the second verse of the first chapter of the Second Book of Kings, by Josephus, contains an allusion to the worship of Baalzebub under the form of a Fly: “Now it happened that Ahaziah, as he was coming down from the top of his house, fell down from it, and in his sickness sent to the Fly (Baalzebub), which was the god of Ekron, for that was this god’s name, to enquire about his recovery.”992
With reference to this worship, we read in Purchas’s Pilgrims: “At Accaron was worshipped Baalzebub, that is, the Lord of the Flies, either of contempt of his idolatrie, so called; or rather of the multitude of Flies, which attended the multitude of his sacrifices, when from the sacrifices at the Temple of Jerusalem, as some say, they were wholly free: or for that hee was their Larder-god (as the Roman Hercules) to drive away flies: or for that from a forme of a Flie, in which he was worshipped.… But for Beelzebub, he was their Æsculapius or Physicke god, as appeareth by Ahaziah who sent to consult with him in his sickness. And perhaps from this cause the blaspheming Pharisies, rather applyed the name of this then any other Idoll to our blessed Saviour (Math. x. 25) whom they saw indeed to performe miraculous cures, which superstition had conceived of Baalzebub: and if any thing were done by that Idoll, it could by no other cause bee effected but by the Devill, as tending (like the popish miracles) to the confirmation of Idolatrie.”993
This god of the Flies was so called, thinks Whiston, as was Jove among the Greeks, from his supposed power over Flies, in driving them away from the flesh of their sacrifices, which otherwise would have been very troublesome to them.994
It has been conjectured that the Fly, under which Baalzebub was represented, was the Tumble-bug, Scarabæus pilluarius; in which case, says Dr. Smith, Baalzebub and Beelzebub might be used indifferently.995
“Urspergensis saith that the Devil did very frequently appear in the form of a Fly; whence it was that some of the heathens called their familiar spirit Musca or Fly: perchance alluding to that of Plautus:
This man, O my father, is a Fly, nothing can be concealed from him, be it secret or publick, he is presently there, and knowes all the matter.”996
Loke, the deceiver of the gods, is fabled in the Northern Mythology, to have metamorphosed himself into a Fly: and demons, in the shape of Flies, were kept imprisoned by the Finlanders, to be let loose on men and beasts.997
In Scotland, a tutelary Fly, believed immortal, presided over a fountain in the county of Banff: and here also a large blue Fly, resting on the bark of trees, was distinguished as a witch.998
Among the games and plays of the ancient Greeks was the Χαλκη Μυῖα, or Brazen Fly:—a variety of blind-man’s-buff, in which a boy having his eyes bound with a fillet, went groping round, calling out, “I am seeking the Brazen Fly.” His companions replied, “You may seek, but you will not find it”—at the same time striking him with cords made of the inner bark of the papyros; and thus they proceeded till one of them was taken.999
This is most probably an allusion to some species of Fly of a bronze color which is most difficult to catch, as, for instance, the little fly found in summer beneath arbors, apparently standing motionless in the air.
Petrus Ramus tells us of an iron Fly, made by Regiomontanus, a famous mathematician of Nuremberg, which, at a feast, to which he had invited his familiar friends, flew forth from his hand, and taking a round, returned to his hand again, to the great astonishment of the beholders. Du Bartas thus expresses this:
We find also in a work bearing the title “Apologie pour les Grands Homines Accusés de Magie,” that “Jean de Montroyal presented to the Emperor Charles V. an iron Fly, which made a solemn circuit round its inventor’s head, and then reposed from its fatigue on his arm.”—Probably the same automaton, since Regiomontanus and Montroyal are the same.
Such a Fly as the above is rather extraordinary, yet I have something better to tell—still about a Fly.
Gervais, Chancellor to the Emperor Otho III., in his book entitled “Otia Imperatoris,” informs us that “the sage Virgilius, Bishop of Naples, made a brass Fly, which he placed on one of the city gates, and that this mechanical Fly, trained like a shepherd’s dog, prevented any other fly entering Naples; so much so, that during eight years the meat exposed for sale in the market was never once tainted!”1001
“Varro affirmeth,” says Pliny, “that the heads of Flies applied fresh to the bald place, is a convenient medicine for the said infirmity and defect. Some use in this case the bloud of flies: others mingle their ashes with the ashes of paper used in old time, or els of nuts; with this proportion, that there be a third part only of the ashes of flies to the rest, and herewith for ten days together rubb the bare places where the hair is gone. Some there be againe, who temper and incorporat togither the said ashes of Flies with the juice of colewort and brest-milke: others take nothing thereto but honey.”1002
Mucianus, who was thrice consul, carried about him a living Fly, says Pliny, wrapped in a piece of white linen, and strongly asserted that to the use of this expedient he owed his preservation from ophthalmia.1003
Ferdinand Mendez Pinto says: “In our travels with the ambassador of the King of Bramaa to the Calaminham, we saw in a grot men of a sect of one of their Saints, named Angemacur: these lived in deep holes, made in the mider of the rock, according to the rule of their wretched order, eating nothing but Flies, Ants, Scorpions, and Spiders, with the juice of a certain herb, much like to sorrel.”1004
Says Moufet, in his Theater of Insects: “Plutarch, in his Artaxerxes, relates that it was a law amongst a certain people, that whosoever should be so bold as to laugh at and deride their lawes and constitutions of state, was bound for twenty daies together in an open chest naked, all besmeared with honey and milk, and so became a prey to the Flies and Bees, afterward when the days were expired he was put into a woman’s habit and thrown headlong down a mountain.… Of which kinde of punishment also Suidas makes mention in his Epicurus. There was likewise for greater offenders, a punishment of Boats, so called. For that he that was convict of high treason, was clapt between two boats, with his head, hands, and feet hanging out: for his drink he had milk and honey powred down his throat, with which also his head and hands were sprinkled, then being set against the sun, he drew to him abundance of stinging Flies, and within being full of their worms, he putrefied by little and little, and so died. Which kinde of examples of severity as the ancients shewed to the guilty and criminous offenders; so on the other side the Spaniards in the Indies, used to drive numbers of the innocents out of their houses, as the custome is among them, naked, all bedawbed with honey, and expose them in open air to the biting of most cruel Flies.”1005
Mr. Henry Mayhew, in that part of his interesting work on London Labor and London Poor devoted to the London Street-folk, has given us the narratives of several “Catch-’em-Alive” sellers—a set of poor boys who sell prepared papers for the purpose of catching Flies. He discovered, as he relates, a colony of these “Catch-’em-alive” boys residing in Pheasant-court, Gray’s-inn-lane. They were playing at “pitch-and-toss” in the middle of the paved yard, and all were very willing to give him their statements; indeed, the only difficulty he had was in making his choice among the youths.
“Please, sir,” said one with teeth ribbed like celery, to him, “I’ve been at it longer than him.”
“Please, sir, he ain’t been out this year with the papers,” said another, who was hiding a handful of buttons behind his back.
“He’s been at shoe-blacking, sir; I’m the only reg’lar fly-boy,” shouted a third, eating a piece of bread as dirty as London snow.
A big lad with a dirty face, and hair like hemp, was the first of the “catch-’em-alive” boys who gave him his account of his trade. He was a swarthy featured boy, with a broad nose like a negro’s, and on his temple was a big half-healed scar, which he accounted for by saying that “he had been runned over” by a cab, though, judging from the blackness of one eye, it seemed to Mr. Mayhew to have been the result of some street fight. He said:
“I’m an Irish boy, and nearly turned sixteen, and I’ve been silling fly-papers for between eight and nine year. I must have begun to sill them when they first come out. Another boy first tould me of them, and he’d been silling them about three weeks before me. He used to buy them of a party as lives in a back-room near Drury-lane, what buys paper and makes the catch ’em alive for himself. When they first come out they used to charge sixpence a dozen for ’em, but now they’ve got ’em to twopence ha’penny. When I first took to silling ’em, there was a tidy lot of boys at the business, but not so many as now, for all the boys seem at it. In our court alone I should think there was about twenty boys silling the things.
“At first, when there was a good time, we used to buy three or four gross together, but now we don’t no more than half a gross. As we go along the streets we call out different cries. Some of us says, ‘Fly-papers, fly-papers, ketch ’em all alive.’ Others make a kind of song of it, singing out, ‘Fly-paper, ketch ’em all alive, the nasty flies, tormenting the baby’s eyes. Who’d be fly-blow’d, by all the nasty blue-bottles, beetles, and flies?’ People likes to buy of a boy as sings out well, ’cos it makes ’em laugh.
“I don’t think I sell so many in town as I do in the borders of the country, about Highbury, Croydon, and Brentford. I’ve got some regular customers in town about the City-prison and the Caledonian-road; and after I’ve served them and the town custom begins to fall off, then I goes to the country. We goes two of us together, and we takes about three gross. We keep on silling before us all the way, and we comes back the same road. Last year we sould very well in Croydon, and it was the best place for gitting the best price for them; they’d give a penny a piece for ’em there, for they didn’t know nothing about them. I went off one day at ten o’clock and didn’t come home till two in the morning. I sould eighteen dozen out in that d’rection the other day, and got rid of them before I had got half-way. But flies are very scarce at Croydon this year, and we haven’t done so well. There ain’t half as many flies this summer as last.
“Some people says the papers draws more flies than they ketches, and that when one gets in, there’s twenty others will come to see him. It’s according to the weather as the flies is about. If we have a fine day it fetches them out, but a cold day kills more than our papers.
“We sills the most papers to little cook-shops and sweet-meat shops. We don’t sill so many at private houses. The public-houses is pretty good customers, ’cos the beer draws the flies. I sould nine dozen at one house—a school—at Highgate, the other day. I sould ’em two for three-ha’ pence. That was a good hit, but then t’other days we loses. If we can make a ha’penny each we thinks we does well.
“Those that sills their papers at three a-penny buys them at St. Giles’s, and pays only three ha’pence a dozen for them, but they ain’t half as big and good as those we pays tuppence-ha’penny a dozen for.
“Barnet is a good place for fly-papers; there’s a good lot of flies down there. There used to be a man at Barnet as made ’em, but I can’t say if he do now. There’s another at Brentford, so it ain’t much good going that way.
“In cold weather the papers keep pretty well, and will last for months with just a little warming at the fire; for they tears on opening when they are dry. You see we always carry them with the stickey sides doubled up together like a sheet of writing-paper. In hot weather, if you keep them folded up, they lasts very well; but if you opens them, they dry up. It’s easy opening them in hot weather, for they comes apart as easy as peeling a horrange. We generally carries the papers in a bundle on our arm, and we ties a paper as is loaded with flies round our cap, just to show the people the way to ketch ’em. We get a loaded paper given to us at a shop.
“When the papers come out first, we use to do very well with fly-papers; but now it’s hard work to make our own money for ’em. Some days we used to make six shillings a day regular. But then we usen’t to go out every day, but take a rest at home. If we do well one day, then we might stop idle another day, resting. You see, we had to do our twenty or thirty miles silling them to get that money, and then the next day we was tired.
“The silling of papers is gradual falling off. I could go out and sill twenty dozen wonst where I couldn’t sill one now. I think I does a very grand day’s work if I yearns a shilling. Perhaps some days I may lose by them. You see, if it’s a very hot day, the papers gets dusty; and besides, the stuff gets melted and oozes out; though that don’t do much harm, ’cos we gets a bit of whitening and rubs ’em over. Four years ago we might make ten shillings a day at the papers, but now, taking from one end of the fly-season to the other, which is about three months, I think we makes about one shilling a day out of papers, though even that ain’t quite certain. I never goes out without getting rid of mine, somehow or another, but then I am obleeged to walk quick and look about me.
“When it’s a bad time for silling the papers, such as a wet, could day, then most of the fly-paper boys goes out with brushes, cleaning boots. Most of the boys is now out hopping. They goes reg’lar every year after the season is give over for flies.
“The stuff as they puts on the paper is made out of boiled oil and turpentine and resin. It’s seldom as a fly lives more than five minutes after it gets on the paper, and then it’s as dead as a house. The blue-bottles is tougher, but they don’t last long, though they keeps on fizzing as if they was trying to make a hole in the paper. The stuff is only p’isonous for flies, though I never heard of anybody as ever eat a fly-paper.”
A second lad, in conclusion, said: “There’s lots of boys going selling ‘ketch-’em-alive oh’s’ from Golden-lane, and White-chapel and the Borough. There’s lots, too, comes out of Gray’s-inn-lane and St. Giles’s. Near every boy who has nothing to do goes out with fly-papers. Perhaps it ain’t that the flies is falled off that we don’t sill so many papers now, but because there’s so many boys at it.”
A third, of the lot the most intelligent and gentle in his demeanor, though the smallest in stature, said:
“I’ve been longer at it than the last boy, though I’m only getting on for thirteen, and he’s older than I’m; ’cos I’m little and he’s big, getting a man. But I can sell them quite as well as he can, and sometimes better, for I can holler out just as loud, and I’ve got reg’lar places to go to. I was a very little fellow when I first went out with them, but I could sell them pretty well then, sometimes three or four dozen a day. I’ve got one place, in a stable, where I can sell a dozen at a time to country people.
“I calls out in the streets, and I goes into the shops, too, and calls out, ‘Ketch ’em alive, ketch ’em alive; ketch all the nasty black-beetles, blue-bottles, and flies; ketch ’em from teasing the baby’s eyes.’ That’s what most of us boys cries out. Some boys who is stupid only says, ‘Ketch ’em alive,’ but people don’t buy so well from them.
“Up in St. Giles’s there is a lot of fly-boys, but they’re a bad set, and will fling mud at gentlemen, and some prigs the gentlemen’s pockets. Sometimes, if I sell more than a big boy, he’ll get mad and hit me. He’ll tell me to give him a halfpenny and he won’t touch me, and that if I don’t he’ll kill me. Some of the boys takes an open fly-paper, and makes me look another way, and then they sticks the ketch-’em-alive on my face. The stuff won’t come off without soap and hot water, and it goes black, and looks like mud. One day a boy had a broken fly-paper, and I was taking a drink of water, and he come behind me and slapped it up in my face. A gentleman as saw him give him a crack with a stick and me twopence. It takes your breath away, until a man comes and takes it off. It all sticked to my hair, and I couldn’t rack (comb) right for some time.…
“I don’t like going along with other boys, they take your customers away; for perhaps they’ll sell ’em at three a penny to ’em, and spoil the customers for you. I won’t go with the big boy you saw, ’cos he’s such a blackgeyard; when he’s in the country he’ll go up to a lady and say, ‘Want a fly-paper, marm?’ and if she says ‘No,’ he’ll perhaps job his head in her face—butt at her like.
“When there’s no flies, and the ketch-’em-alive is out, then I goes tumbling. I can turn a cat’enwheel over on one hand. I’m going to-morrow to the country, harvesting and hopping—for, as we says, ‘Go out hopping, come in jumping.’ We start at three o’clock to-morrow, and we shall get about twelve o’clock at night at Dead Man’s Barn. It was left for poor people to sleep in, and a man was buried there in a corner. The man had got six farms of hops; and if his son hadn’t buried him there, he wouldn’t have had none of the riches.
“The greatest number of fly-papers I’ve sold in a day is about eight dozen. I never sells no more than that; I wish I could. People won’t buy ’em now. When I’m at it I makes, taking one day with another, about ten shillings a week. You see, if I sold eight dozen, I’d make four shillings. I sell ’em at a penny each, at two for three-ha’pence, and three for twopence. When they gets stale I sells ’em for three a penny. I always begin by asking a penny each, and perhaps they’ll say, ‘Give me two for three ha’pence?’ I’ll say, ‘Can’t, ma’am,’ and then they pulls out a purse full of money and gives a penny.
“The police is very kind to us, and don’t interfere with us. If they see another boy hitting us they’ll take off their belts and hit ’em. Sometimes I’ve sold a ketch-’em-alive to a policeman; he’ll fold it up and put it into his pocket to take home with him. Perhaps he’s got a kid, and the flies teazes its eyes.
“Some ladies like to buy fly-cages better than ketch-em-alive’s, because sometimes when they’re putting ’em up they falls in their faces, and then they screams.”
The history of the manufacture of Fly-papers was thus given to Mr. Mayhew by a manufacturer, whom he found in a small attic-room near Drury-lane: “The first man as was the inventor of these fly-papers kept a barber’s shop in St. Andrew-street, Seven Dials, of the name of Greenwood or Greenfinch, I forget which. I expect he diskivered it by accident, using varnish and stuff, for stale varnish has nearly the same effect as our composition. He made ’em and sold ’em at first at threepence and fourpence a piece. Then it got down to a penny. He sold the receipt to some other parties, and then it got out through their having to employ men to help ’em. I worked for a party as made ’em, and then I set to work making ’em for myself, and afterwards hawking them. They was a greater novelty then than they are now, and sold pretty well. Then men in the streets, who had nothing to do, used to ask me where I bought ’em, and then I used to give ’em my own address, and they’d come and find me.”1006
Œstridæ—Bot-flies.
The larvæ of Bots, Œstris ovis, found in the heads of sheep and goats, have been prescribed, and that, from the tripod of Delphos, as a remedy for the epilepsy. We are told so on the authority of Alexander Trailien; but whether Democritus, who consulted the oracle, was cured by this remedy, does not appear; the story shows, however, that the ancients were aware that these maggots made their way even into the brain of living animals.1007 The oracle answered Democritus as follows:
The common saying that a whimsical person is maggoty, or has got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the freaks the sheep have been observed to exhibit when infested by their Bots.1009
The following “charme for the Bots1010 in a horse” is found in Scots’ Discovery of Witchcraft, printed in 1651: “You must both say and do thus upon the diseased horse three days together, before the sun rising: In nomine pa†tris & fi†lii & Spiritus†sancti, Exorcize te vermen per Deum pa†trem & fi†lium & Spiritum†sanctum: that is, In the name of God the father, the sonne, and the Holy Ghost, I conjure thee O worm by God, the Father, the sonne, and the Holy Ghost; that thou neither eate nor drink the flesh, blood, or bones of this horse; and that thou hereby maiest be made as patient as Job, and as good as S. John Baptist, when he baptized Christ in Jordan, In nomine pa†tris & fi†lii et spiritus†sancti. And then say three Pater nosters, and three Aves, in the right eare of the horse, to the glory of the holy trinity. Do†minus fili†us spirit†us Mari†a.”1011
There is a popular error in England respecting the Œstrus (Gasterophilus) equi (hæmorrhoidalis), which Shakspeare has followed, and which has been judiciously explained by Mr. Clark. Shakspeare makes the carrier at Rochester observe: “Peas and oats are as dank here as a dog, and that’s the next way to give poor jades the bots.”1012
The larvæ of this insect, says Mr. Clark, are mostly known among the country people by the name of wormals, wormuls, warbles, or, more properly, Bots. And our ancestors erroneously imagined that poverty or improper food engendered them in horses. The truth, however, seems to be, that when the animal is kept without food the Bots are also, and are then, without doubt, most troublesome; whence it was very naturally supposed that poverty or bad food was the parent of them.1013
A cow with its hide perforated by Warbles, in England, was said to be elf-shot: the holes being made by the arrows of the little malignant fairies. In the Northern Antiquities, p. 404, we find the following:
“If at such a time you were to look through an elf-bore in wood, where a thorter knot has been taken out, or through the hole made by an elf-arrow (which has probably been made by a Warble) in the skin of a beast that has been elf-shot, you may see the elf-bull naiging (butting) with the strongest bull or ox in the herd; but you will never see with that eye again.”
In the Scottish history of the trials of witches, we find the following: Alexander Smaill offended Jonet Cock, who threatened him, “deare sail yow rewe it! and within half ane howre therafter, going to the pleugh,—befoir he had gone one about, their came ane great Wasp or Bee, so that the foir horses did runne away with the pleugh, and wer liklie to have killed themselves, and the said Alexander and the boy that was with him, narrowlie escaped with their lyves.”1014 Possibly the incident is not exaggerated, as a single Œstrus will turn the oxen of a whole herd, and render them furious.
Spencer, in his Travels in Circassia, speaks of a poisonous Fly, known in Hungary under the name of the Golubaeser-fly, which is singularly destructive to cattle. The Hungarian peasants, to account for the severity of the bite of this insect, tell us that in the caverns, near the Castle of Golubaes, the renowned champion, St. George, killed the dragon, and that its decomposed remains have continued to generate these insects down to the present day. So firmly did they believe this, that they closed up the mouths of the caverns with stone walls.1015