Part 9

FLIES.

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ENGLISH poets, whenever they have condescended to take notice of the domestic fly, have done so from a favourable point of view. It is for them the sportive fly, the jocund fly, or, at worst, the giddy fly. This in itself will be a sufficient proof to future generations that the poets of our day did not suffer from the loss of their hair, for no bald-headed man would view the foibles of the fly indulgently. It must, therefore, be assumed as proved that the mental exercise of the elaboration of poetry causes a certain cerebral warmth which conduces to the growth of the hair; and this view of the case will receive an additional support should any portraits of Lord Tennyson be extant at the time when this investigation takes place. It is singular that, whereas bald-headed men have a marked and unanimous objection to flies, the latter have on their part a warm and effusive affection for bald-headed men. No philosopher has, so far as we know, attempted to explain the irresistible attraction which a bald head presents to a fly. It has been suggested, indeed, that, owing to its high polish and its capacity for reflecting light, it is assumed to be a luminous globe, and so exercises the same attraction to the fly as the globe of a gas light does to the nocturnal moth. A far more probable solution is that, as we know, the feet of flies are provided with suckers, and that as but few surfaces are sufficiently smooth for the perfect working of these machines, they view a bald head as a delightful place of exercise for them, and enjoy the fun exactly as the street boy enjoys the similar sport of attaching a leather sucker to the pavement and pulling at it with a string. The fact that poets view the vagaries of the fly with a mild indulgence will also, by our far-off descendants, be taken as a proof that the poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were well-paid and well-to-do persons, living in cool and shaded abodes; for undoubtedly, although the wealthy man who dwells in houses of this kind may view the fly with gentle tolerance, and even with amusement, such is not the light in which it is regarded in the dwellings of the poor. Indeed, it may be said that, with the exceptions named, the fly is invariably regarded as an unmitigated nuisance, rising in many countries to the dignity of a scourge.

In small numbers—in very small numbers—it may be admitted that the fly is, as Artemus Ward would have said, an “amoosing little cuss.” His restless, and apparently purposeless, circling and dancing in the air, the way in which he is perpetually charging any other of his species who flies near him, the earnestness and perseverance with which he brushes his many-lensed eyes with his forelegs, and arranges his wings, the gravity with which he inspects and tastes the sugar and other articles on the table, the confidence with which he treats all that is yours as his, and the pertinacity with which he insists on committing suicide in the milk jug—all these traits are amusing when you do not get too much of them.

The raison d’être of the fly has not yet been discovered. Naturalists tell us that he belongs to the order of Diptera—that is, that he has but two wings—but they cannot tell us much more about him. The common house fly is provided only with a proboscis, somewhat resembling that of the elephant, with which he takes up moisture; but he has a cousin exactly resembling him, who when, relying upon this likeness, you allow him to settle on the back of the hand, neck, or other surface of flesh, instantly digs in a sharp lancet, which is capable of drawing blood. Happily, however, this treacherous cousin is comparatively rare, and none of the poets appear to have been familiar with him. But if in England it is still doubtful why the fly was created, there is no hesitation on that point in foreign countries. There the consensus of opinion is unanimous. The fly was made to try the patience of man. He was intended to make human life a burden by his buzzing, his settling, and his tickling, by the zeal he shows in rendering food uneatable, and by the cunning with which he circumvents all the efforts of man to interfere with his designs.

No one, indeed, can watch a fly engaged in the work of human torment without entertaining a suspicion that he is possessed of a certain diabolical instinct. So long as the man is wide awake, the fly will keep at a distance, unless, indeed, he sees that he is engaged in writing, and that his hands are ineffective for offensive purposes. The instant, however, that drowsiness steals over the subject, the fly, who has pretended to be taking no notice whatever of him, but to be engaged in a game of touch-as-touch-can with two or three of his comrades in the air, at once gives up his romps and takes to business. Choosing the most sensitive point he can find, he alights upon it, and begins to shuffle his feet about. A score of times he repeats this performance, generally selecting a fresh spot each time, and always evading any slaps aimed at him. It is remarkable that while at other times he flies noiselessly, he begins to buzz when he commences this game, so that even when he does not settle, he causes watchfulness and drives away sleep.

The fly who establishes himself in the kitchen enjoys higher delights than the flies who occupy other portions of the house. Cooks are notoriously an irritable genus, and the more irritable a victim, the more a fly enjoys tormenting him or her. Besides, cooks often have their hands full, and so are unable to defend themselves, and a fly always in preference attacks a person under these conditions. It is an admitted fact that flies possess a strong esprit de corps, and that they resent any interference with their ways. In a house where flies are undisturbed, they take good care not to be troublesome beyond a certain point. But if war is waged upon them, they are implacable. The foolish man who tries fly paper, whether of the sticky or poisonous sort, will soon regret having done so, for legions of flies assemble to revenge their slaughtered comrades. For every one slain a hundred put in their appearance, and madness is the probable result of perseverance in the crusade against them. The Egyptian woman is well aware of this, and will allow a hundred flies to settle undisturbed around her infant’s eyes, knowing that if she brushes them away worse will befall.

As autumn draws to its close, the fly changes his habits. He ceases to gambol in the air, for although his attacks upon human beings become more persistent and annoying than before, the quickness and the cunning are gone, and an obstinate, blundering stupidity has taken their place, and the fly in turn becomes the victim. If he escape this fate, upon finding death at hand he selects some spot where his demise will be particularly objectionable to the careful mistress of the house: a window, a looking-glass, a burnished ornament, or even a particularly white piece of wall-paper is chosen, and there he dies, a white fungus growing out of his body, and spreading to some distance around the spot where he has breathed his last. Whether this white fungus is the cause of his death, or whether his death is the cause of the white fungus, is still a point of dispute among the learned; the rest of mankind are contented to know that he is dead.

Unhappily, a certain proportion live over the winter, taking refuge in warm nooks and corners, and hibernating there. So seldom are they found, however, that it is a belief among the unlearned that the fly, like the swallow, is a migratory creature, and that upon the approach of cold weather he seeks warmer climes. It is urged, with a strong show of reason, how can all the vast number of flies destined to be the parents of the countless myriads in the following year hide away so as to escape detection? Scientific men have never attempted to grapple with the problem, but cover their ignorance by saying that as they are sure flies do not migrate, and as flies do reappear in the spring, it is self-evident they must hide away somewhere; and with this dictum the public must be content. Taken all in all, it must be admitted that the fly has a good time of it, and that his life is devoted solely to amusement, varied by feeding. Most other creatures labour hard for a not inconsiderable portion of their life in the preparation for and care of their young. The fly neither builds nests like the birds, nor lays up stores of food like the bees and wasps, nor pierces holes in wood like the beetles, nor spends half his time in the hunt for food like most quadrupeds. He assumes no responsibilities, for he has neither home nor family. Man places his food on tables for him, and builds mansions in which he can sport, untroubled by the weather. As the fly is found in every part of the known world, it must be assumed that he really has his uses, and that he possesses some latent virtue, edible or medicinal, which a future generation will, it may be hoped, discover and turn to account.

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THE PARROT.

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THE parrot is at once wise and amusing—a conjunction seldom observed in the human race. Under the general denomination of parrots are included several distinct species, varying from the great macaw to the tiny paroquet, having an exceeding wide range of distribution, being found in South America, Africa, and India, and the group of islands stretching down to Australia. Brilliant colouring is the most striking characteristic of the family, although there are some members, especially the parrot of Western Africa, that are almost Quaker-like in the quiet grey of their plumage. Next, perhaps, to their colour, their most notable characteristic is the extreme harshness of their voices, which are at once shriller, more discordant, and more agonising to the human ear than the sound uttered by any other of the animal creation, being approached only by the feminine voice when raised in anger. It is the more surprising that this should be so, since, as is evidenced by his nice powers of imitation, the parrot is endowed with a delicate ear, and there can be little doubt that the quality of his own voice, and of the voices of his wife, his family, and neighbours, must be a serious drawback to his happiness. Many parrots are gregarious in their habits, and the noise made by one of these flocks is prodigious. The shrill screams, the angry scoldings, and hoarse ejaculations create a din not altogether dissimilar to that which must have arisen from a city in ancient times when being sacked by a victorious soldiery. Among the smaller species, such as paroquets, every movement is marked by grace and agility. They are restless and playful, and very affectionate in their intercourse with each other. Attachment between husband and wife is very tender and lasting, and the death of one is generally followed speedily by that of its mate. We have less opportunity of observing the domestic relations of the larger parrots—the macaws and cockatoos—for few men are hardy enough to support the noise of more than one of these birds, and a scolding match between a cockatoo and his wife would be sufficiently discordant to empty even the largest house of all other inmates. It is singular that the tongue of this, the noisiest of birds, resembles more closely that of man than does the tongue of any other bird, being singularly thick and fleshy; it is doubtless due to this peculiarity that it is able to imitate the tones of the human voice so accurately as to defy discrimination.

While cheerfulness, sociability, and activity characterise the smaller parrots, the larger birds are marked by the striking variation of their moods. At times they will exhibit for hours an extreme restlessness, climbing up and down their perches, hanging head downwards, and indulging in a variety of strange antics. At others they will sit for long periods almost immovable, being distinguishable only from stuffed birds by the occasional droop over the eyeball of their white filmy eyelids. The mental characteristics of the larger parrots can hardly be termed agreeable, being marked by cynicism, malice, and a consciousness of superior wisdom. We do not say the assumption of superior wisdom, because no one can doubt its existence; and one of the problems which the human mind has failed to solve is what there is that the parrot doesn’t know. Diogenes in his tub could hardly have been wiser or more cynical than an elderly cockatoo; and a human being, when watching one of these birds, feels the same consciousness of youth and inexperience that David Copperfield always suffered from in the presence of the irreproachable Littimer, and that the traveller in Egypt experiences when gazing at the Sphinx. One cannot but feel that the parrot has, in addition to his inborn stock of wisdom, acquired a deep knowledge of human nature, as the result of years of careful study; that he has weighed man in the balance, and has come to the conclusion that he is altogether wanting. There is, too, the unpleasant feeling that the parrot has studied almost exclusively the worst side of human nature. The leer of his half-closed eye, the mocking laugh, the expression of malice in his tones, the hypocritical demeanour of friendliness until a finger approaches near enough to be seized—all this testifies sadly to the fact that the parrot has assimilated the worst qualities of man, while there is no sign that the better ones have made the slightest impression upon him. Of benevolence there is no trace, and, although capable of affection towards his mistress, he treats all other persons with equal nonchalance and contempt, although he may be cajoled into temporary familiarity by the offer of favourite food. The deep emphasis with which he mutters “Poor Polly,” shows the intense self-pity with which he views his forced habitation among such trivial and contemptible companions, and his regret at his own moral degeneration, the result of association with them. He knows that under happier circumstances he might have grown a respected patriarch in his native wilds, honoured, by those able to appreciate him, for his wisdom, and surrounded by respectful and admiring descendants, and it is the contrast between this and his present lot that has soured the bird’s temper and made him a cynic and a misanthrope.

Hardly less prominent a characteristic among parrots than cynicism is malice. The parrot delights openly and undisguisedly in giving annoyance. To seize the tail of a passing cat, or to awaken a sleeping dog with a sharp bite, affords him a delight over which he will laugh for hours. It is a pleasure to him to interrupt a quiet conversation with wild and sudden screams, and if by imitating a tradesman’s cry he can give a servant the trouble of going to the door, his malicious pleasure is unbounded.

The upper mandible of the beak of the parrot bears the same relation to that of other birds, as does the nose of the elephant to the similar feature among quadrupeds. Instead of being fixed to the skull, it is furnished with a separate bone, and is attached by a sort of natural hinge to it. He is thus able to open his mouth to a very wide extent, and to grasp a finger, a nut, or any other object with amazing force. In bestowing this faculty upon the parrot, Nature had an eye solely to the creature’s own benefit, and entirely disregarded the possible consequences to man. The foot, too, has an exceptional formation, giving the bird great power of grasp, enabling it at once to climb, to hang head downwards, or to hold its food while it devours it, with a power and facility almost unequalled among birds. It is not surprising that, with its power of imitating the human voice, and of modulating the natural harshness of its accents to the softest tones of that of a woman, with its human-like manner of taking its food, its close attention to everything that passes around it, and its evident wisdom, the parrot has from the oldest times been regarded with a certain superstitious respect by man. Ælian states that in India these birds were the favourite inmates of the palaces of the princes, and were regarded as objects of sacred reverence by the people. Among civilised nations this feeling has to some extent died out, but even now servant maids generally regard their mistresses’ parrots with dislike and aversion, being never quite sure that the parrot will not act the part of a tell-tale, and mention to its mistress that a shattered ornament was not really, as supposed, the work of the cat. The aversion is almost always mutual, a parrot very seldom admitting the slightest approach of familiarity on the part of a domestic, regarding her with the aversion which the dog manifests towards the tramp. Throughout the East the parrot has always been regarded as a bird possessed of mysterious knowledge and power, and frequently bears a prominent part in Arab legends. As a proof of the ingrained wickedness of the parrot’s nature, it need only be pointed out that it possesses a remarkable facility in acquiring bad language, and will pick up sailors’ oaths far more readily than it will acquire polite language. Upon the whole, although endowed with remarkable physical advantages, it must regretfully be owned that the parrot is a striking example of misapplied talent.

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THE COCKROACH.

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THE cockroach, the black-beetle of the London kitchen, is a creature that excites an amount of repulsion that cannot be accounted for or explained. There is nothing threatening in its appearance, as in that of some of the larvæ, notably the one popularly known as the “devil’s coach-horse.” It is unprovided with offensive weapons at either extremity; it can neither sting nor bite. It has not the habit of startling nervous persons by leaping suddenly upon them, as do the cricket and grasshopper. There is nothing about its figure that should be displeasing to the eye. It is, as far as man is concerned, absolutely harmless, and yet it certainly excites in the majority of persons a feeling of aversion approaching abhorrence, such as no other insect gives rise to. The cold light of reason fails to discover any ground for such a feeling, and it has been gravely adduced by some as a proof of the truth of the belief in the transmigration of souls; and that only upon the assumption that the souls of evil men are condemned to pass a portion of their future existence in the form of cockroaches, can the general antipathy to these creatures be accounted for.

There are many unsolved problems connected with the cockroach. Where does he come from, and especially where did he abide before man began to build houses? In this country, at any rate, he always takes up his abode in the habitation man provides for him. No one ever came across him in the fields or woods. It is in the house he lives and multiplies. He fears man and shuns his society, and yet appears to have a mysterious attraction to his abodes; the cricket only among insects, and the mouse and the rat among quadrupeds, share with the cockroach his partiality for human dwellings. But the cricket is but a domesticated grasshopper, the mouse has a country cousin, and the rat will take up his abode in many other localities. The cockroach alone is never found elsewhere, and has no relations in any way closely connected with him who are dwellers in the open air.

Next to man’s houses, the blatta, as he is scientifically called, loves his ships; but the variety that is found in vessels, especially in those trading with the East, is a larger, uglier, and in every way more repulsive creature than his English cousin. Once on board—and there is scarce a ship afloat into which he has not smuggled himself—he is there to stay, and short of sinking the vessel, or of fastening down the hatches and suffocating him with the fumes of sulphur, there is no way of getting rid of him. He multiplies with extraordinary rapidity, and his odour, when he is present in multitude, is so strong that in the hold many ships trading in hot countries it is almost overpowering. The flatness of his body enables him to crawl through every chink and crevice, and all efforts to keep him out of the cabins are unavailing. The ship variety has none of that fear of man that sends the kitchen cockroaches scuttling in every direction at the approach of a maid with a light. They will fearlessly perambulate his cabin, take up their posts on the deck-beams over his head, will watch him gravely with waving antennæ, and the moment they discover that he is asleep will run over his head and face, entangle themselves in his beard and hair, and gently nibble the skin on the tips of his fingers and toes.

The cockroach is an admirable judge of the weather. On board a ship the approach of a rain squall will bring them up from the hold into the cabins in tens of thousands; and in vessels where they abound they will blacken the ceiling, drop on to the tables, and drive nervous passengers for refuge to the deck. Whether the British variety is equally affected by the weather is a point at present undetermined, for as he does not emerge from his hiding places until the servants have gone upstairs and the lights are out, his habits have never been examined very closely.

The eccentricity in the movements of the cockroach has doubtless had a share in producing the feeling with which he is regarded. His ordinary pace is a fast though stealthy walk, but he is given to sudden pauses, remaining immovable, save for the constant waving of his long antennæ, which show that he is deep in the meditation of past sins or future wickedness. But when alarmed his speed is extraordinary: he is gone in an instant like a flash, and it needs no ordinary quickness of eye and action to bring the avenging foot down upon him. Even in his death he acts upon the human nerves, exploding with a sharp crack of so singularly thrilling a description that many even of those who most greatly dislike the cockroach cannot bring themselves to slay it.

It is on this account principally that nothing like an organised war is waged against the cockroach. Feeble efforts are made now and then to get rid of it by scattering beetle paste, and other supposed destroyers, about the kitchen, or by setting traps for it to walk into; but these measures, although effective to a certain point, make but small inroads upon its numbers, and it is only when it ascends the stairs and begins to pervade the house that serious attention is paid to it. There are men in London who make a livelihood by clearing houses, restaurants, and other dwellings, of cockroaches. Their methods are a secret, but they are certainly efficacious, and did the operators advertise their addresses they would be very largely patronised. Some have supposed that they charm the insects from their hiding-places by the sounds of sweet music; others that they possess a perfume which the cockroach cannot withstand, and that by it he is attracted to his death; while a few hold the belief that the insects are induced to leave their abodes by the use of cabalistic words.

The cockroach, like most of the order of orthoptera to which it belongs, retains the same form from the date it issues from the egg to its death. Familiar instances of this peculiarity are the earwig, locust, and grasshopper. The only difference between the first and second stage is that they do not become winged until arriving at maturity, the wings being then folded up under the leathery reticulated wing-case that distinguishes the order. It is rarely, indeed, that the cockroach uses the means of locomotion with which nature has provided it. It is possible that if it took to out-door exercise it would do so; but, passing its life as it does indoors, it has no occasion whatever for the use of its wings, and many people are even unaware that it is provided with them. The cockroach is not particular as to its food, and will devour almost anything that comes in its way. Crumbs of bread, fragments of fat or meat, sweets of all kinds, and indeed almost all food consumed by man, are welcome to it. It has a marked partiality for boot blacking, and is even able to digest leather. It will drink water, but its tendency is rather towards liquids of a sweet or intoxicating nature. Treacle or sugar in water attracts it, but it has a marked preference for beer, and traps for its ensnarement are generally baited with this liquor.

Unlike the cricket and the grasshopper, the cockroach is mute, at least so far as our ears are able to perceive, although it is certain that it can carry on long conversations with its own species, and two of them may often be seen standing head to head in close confabulation, enforcing their arguments with waves and flourishes of their antennæ. Entomologists may assign the blatta a specific place among the orders and genera of insects in accordance with their characteristics, but morally they stand apart. They are the rats of the insect world, swarming out in their armies from dark recesses in search of garbage; no one, indeed, can doubt that, had they the power, they would not hesitate to follow the example of the rats on the Rhine, and to devour a bishop if he fell in their way. Other insects stand apart from them. The cricket may dwell in their midst, but he is not of them, while no observer has remarked a single case of friendship between the industrious bee, the impetuous and hardworking wasp, or, indeed, any other of what may be called respectable insects, with the cockroach—a strong proof that the creature is viewed with the same marked disfavour by the insect world that it excites in the breast of man.

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