United States or Ecuador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is idiotic, childish a humiliating exhibition of the silliness of masculine human nature. Members of our station-party who had enlisted but a week back, and who knew nothing whatever of their work, would, in a whisper, mock the Bluebottles although every Bluebottle had taken first-aid classes and passed examinations at which most of the mockers would have boggled.
The cinnamon Phryganea comes up abundantly from among the stones; and the large peat moss to the west of the tarn abounds, as usual, in house-flies and bluebottles, and in the caterpillars of the fox and oak-egger moths: another proof that the most attractive flies are imitations of the real insects.
For though, as a fact, it had not prevented his completing a hearty meal, he fancied that he felt hungry. "When I was quartered at Halifax there was a fellow who never sent anything but telegrams. Telegraph Jo they called him. He commanded the old Bluebottles. You know the old Bluebottles?
Industrious bees were methodically visiting the buttercups; their bustling, commercial eagerness in marked contrast to the bluebottles and flies that seemed to choose their point of alighting with a sham intentness which did not disguise their lack of any definite purpose. Now and again a feral, domineering wasp would join the crowd, coming up with the air of a fussy, inquisitive overseer.
An unwritten law decreed that Bluebottles only should enter the train: the R.A.M.C. limited themselves to carrying work outside, on the platform and stair. But on this occasion the supply of Bluebottles had, for the moment, run short, and our party took a turn at going up the gangways and evacuating the van-wards.
It was base ingratitude to the devoted band of Bluebottles who had, up till that instant, been toiling at the evacuation of the ward and who, as I chanced to know, had been up all the previous night, carrying stretchers at Paddington and Charing Cross, while we slept cosily. But well, there it was. "Here are some real soldiers!"
I caught him eyeing me, quite as narrowly as the steersman of the wherry had done, and when I asked him what ailed him, he stuck his Tongue in his cheek and grinned audaciously. "Who were those rough fellows in the wherry, yonder, that fouled us?" I asked. "Bluebottles," says he, with another grin. "What d'ye mean, fellow?" I continued.
Laura, when she heard the story, declared she now believed in Ellen Pickering. Redmond gave me a searching look, and asked me if the one-story inn had good beds. "I can take a nap, if necessary," I answered, "in one of Mrs. Sampson's rush-bottomed chairs on the veranda. The croak of the frogs in the pond and the buzz of the bluebottles shall be my lullaby."
These sheaths with the corpses inside them are freely exposed to the air, on the table in my study, where they are visited, according to the time of day, in dense shade and in bright sunlight. Attracted by the effluvia from the dead meat, the bluebottles haunt my laboratory, the windows of which are always open.
It is clear that neither the Drone-flies nor the Bluebottles, whose larvæ live in putrefying matter, nor yet the Ammophilæ who victual theirs with caterpillars, could ever have carried the larvæ which invaded them into cells filled with honey. These larvæ therefore had gone astray; and instinct, as does not often happen, was here at fault. The Hunting Wasps, chaps. xviii. to xx.
Word Of The Day