Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
I'm a worm, a maggot, brother to the pollywog an' child of the blow-fly. I ain't afraid or ashamed of nothin' that creeps or crawls or stinks. But travel with that mistake of creation! Go 'way, man. I ain't proud, but you turn my stomach." And Amos Wentworth went away, alone, dragging a sled loaded with provisions sufficient to last him to Dawson. A mile down the trail Shorty overhauled him.
Try to catch a big blow-fly upon the window-pane and see how difficult the trick is, while with a honey bee it is no trick at all. Or try to "swat" the ordinary house-fly with your hand. See how he squares himself and plants himself as your threatening hand approaches! He is ready for a trial of speed. He seems to know that your hand is slower than he is, and he is right in most cases.
Presumably rites of a similar kind, certainly of some kind, are practised by the Australians who have for their totem the blow-fly, the water-beetle, or the evening star. But they do not eat flies or beetles. Their original purpose in choosing the evening star cannot have been to increase its number. Nor can that have been the object of choosing the mosquito for a totem.
Flour rose during this season to 60l. per ton, and the quartern loaf in Sydney was sold at 3s. 4d. One of the greatest discomforts attendant upon a summer's residence in the bush of Australia, arises from the swarms of flies, large and small, that infest the house. The large blow-fly is a serious nuisance: many a good joint of meat they spoil, in spite of every precaution.
A big blow-fly, attracted, with countless thousands of his kind, to the place of slaughter and decay, had gone to sleep on the side of the stone, and Kweek, in a last desperate effort to obtain a little food, moved forward to secure his prize; but at that moment his strength failed him, his weary limbs relaxed, and the dull, grey film of death overspread his half-closed eyes.
We salt our food, which they do not like. But we are unable to keep them down, or fight with them. Even argument with a blow-fly is inadmissible. We have spiders as big as walnuts, with great hairy legs two or three inches long. We would rather encourage them, as they help to keep down the flies, and they do no harm, though not pretty to look at.
"Oh, come, Berkeley!" he protested, "don't rate us too low. The humblest of creatures has its uses 'even the little pismire, you know, as Izaak Walton tells us. Why, I have got substantial help from a stamp-collector. And then reflect upon the motor-scorcher and the earthworm and the blow-fly.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking