Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 20, 2025
"My word! I'm thankful for the winter for one thing," he began, "and that's because there ain't any blow-flies. They'd give you the pip in the summer. They used to be here blowin' everything they come across. They'd blow the cream if we left it a day. They'd blow you if you didn't look sharp. I had Whiskey taught to ketch 'em. Here, Whiskey!
"But it would have spoilt my credit," continued the Doctor; "and there, I don't want to see a lot of blow-flies with lights in their tails; so, once for all, I sha'n't go." "But you ought to go, my dear," said Mrs Morley, who looked rather annoyed. "Why?" "Why? To take care of Minnie." "It doesn't take two men as well as a couple of servants to take care of one little girl.
However, not three centuries ago, actual experiment gradually convinced the learned that maggots are bred in a dead body only from the eggs laid by parent flies, as shown by the Italian Redi in 1668 who found that no maggots were bred when he simply excluded the flies from access to the dead body by covering it with wire gauze, but that the blow-flies swarmed on the gauze and vainly laid their eggs on it!
'And there you beheld the Signorina Vittoria, who was then bearing the name of Emilia Belloni? 'Which name she changed on her arrival in Italy, illustrious signora, for that of Vittoria Campa "sull' campo dells gloria" ah! ah! her own name being an attraction to the blow-flies in her own country. All this is true. 'It should be a comfort to you! The Signor Mertyrio...
Around it, in spite of the fearful odour, all the women sat for ten days, in a cloud of blow-flies. They burned strong-scented herbs to kill the smell, and dug a little trench across the floor, in order to keep the liquids from the decaying corpse from running into the other half of the house.
'And there you beheld the Signorina Vittoria, who was then bearing the name of Emilia Belloni? 'Which name she changed on her arrival in Italy, illustrious signora, for that of Vittoria Campa "sull' campo dells gloria" ah! ah! her own name being an attraction to the blow-flies in her own country. All this is true. 'It should be a comfort to you! The Signor Mertyrio . . .
It was summer time when they came to my farm; and they were warned, that the blow-flies would destroy their meat, if it was not covered up: they were too lazy, however, to take the slightest care of it; and, as I saw their second week's allowance lying on a table the day after it was served out, covered with a mass of blow-flies, I took them severely to task for their wanton waste and neglect.
In spite of this progress in knowledge the belief in "spontaneous generation" of such excessively minute organisms as the bacteria and yeasts was general until Theodore Schwann in 1836 performed with them just the same experiment as Redi had performed with blow-flies in 1668. The old notions, nevertheless, survive to this day.
"But I could buy a waggon-load of 'em for one day's pay, an' not have any tuggin' and scratchin' with 'em. Melons ain't too stinkin', but lor', tomatoes is a stunner! They rotted till you couldn't stand the smell of them, and it would give a billy-goat the pip to hear them mentioned. There was no sale, and the blow-flies took to 'em. One man down here had thirty acres.
The vixen was exceedingly fond of snails, and would eagerly thrust a fore-paw into the crannies of any old wall or bank where they hibernated; but Vulp much preferred to scratch up the moss in a deserted gravel-pit, and grub in the loosened soil for the drowsy blow-flies and beetles that had chosen the spot for their winter abode.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking