ese expressions, however accurate, mislead us into believing
for a moment that the Sarcophagae are the bold company of master
tainters who haunt our dwellings, more particularly in autumn, and plant
their vermin in our ill-guarded viands. The author of those offences
is Calliphora vomitoria, the bluebottle, who is of a stouter build and
arrayed in darkest blue. It is she who buzzes against our windowpanes,
who craftily besieges the meat safe and who lies in wait in the darkness
for an opportunity to outwit our vigilance. The other, the grey fly,
works jointly with the greenbottles, who do not venture inside our
houses and who work in the sunlight. Less timid, however, than they,
should the outdoor yield be small, she will sometimes come indoors to
perpetrate her villainies. When her business is done, she makes off as
fast as she can, for she does not feel at home with us.

At this moment, my study, a very modest extension of my open air
establishments, has become something of a charnel house. The grey fly
pays me a visit. If I lay a piece of butcher's meat on the windowsill,
she hastens up, works her will on it and retires. No hiding place
escapes her notice among the jars, cups, glasses and receptacles of
every kind with which my shelves are crowded.

With a view to certain experiments, I collected a heap of wasp grubs,
asphyxiated in their underground nests. Stealthily she arrives,
discovers the fat pile and, hailing as treasure trove this provender
whereof her race perhaps has never made use before, entrusts to it an
installment of her family. I have left at the bottom of a glass the best
part of a hard-boiled egg from which I have taken a few bits of white
intended for the greenbottle maggots. The grey fly takes possession of
the remains, recks not of their novelty and colonizes them. Everything
suits her that falls within the category of albuminous matters:
everything, down to dead silkworms; everything, down to a mess of
kidney-beans and chick-peas.

Nevertheless, her preference is for the corpse: furred beast and
feathered beast, reptile and fish, indifferently. Together with the
greenbottles, she is sedulous in her attendance on my pans. Daily she
visits my snakes, takes note of the condition of each of them, savors
them with her proboscis, goes away, comes back, takes her time and at
last proceeds to business. Still, it is not here, amid the tumult of
callers, that I propose to follow her operations. A lump o