The largest kind of mosquito in the valley of the lower Mississippi is called the "Gallinipper." It is peculiarly described, by the boatmen, to be as large as a goose, and that it flies about at night with a brickbat under its wings with which it sharpens its "sting."
They tell a good story to show the superiority of the Gallinipper, over the ordinary Mosquito, in this wise. Some fellow made a bet that, for a certain length of time, he could stand the stings of the mosquitoes inflicted upon his bare back while he lay on his face. He stripped himself for the ordeal, and was bearing it manfully, when some mischievous spectator threw a live coal of fire on him. He winced, and, looking up by way of protest, exclaimed, "I bar (debar) the Gallinipper."
The Culicidae, say Kirby and Spence, like other conquerors who have been the torment of the human race, have attained to fame, and have given their names to bays, towns, and even to considerable territories; and instance Mosquito Bay in St. Christopher's; Mosquito, a town in the Island of Cuba; and the Mosquito Shore of Central America.
Democritus says: "Horse-hair, stretched through the door, and through the middle of the house, destroys Gnats."
St. Macarius, Alban Butler says, was a confectioner of Alexandria, who, in the flower of his age, spent upwards of sixty years in the deserts in labor, penance, and contemplation. "Our Saint," continues Butler, "happened one day to inadvertently kill a Gnat that was biting him in his cell; reflecting that he had lost the opportunity of suffering that mortification, he hastened from the cell for the marshes of Scete, which abound with great flies, whose stings pierce even wild boars. There he continued six months, exposed to those ravaging insects; and to such a degree was his whole body disfigured by them with sores and swellings, that when he returned he was only to be known by his voice."
In the old English translation of the Bible, the observation of our Saviour to the Pharisees, "Ye blind guides, which strain at a Gnat, and swallow a camel," is rendered "which strain out a Gnat," and Bishop Pearce observes that this is conformable to the sense of the passage. An allusion is made to the custom which prevailed in Oriental countries of passing their wine and other liquors through a strainer, that no Gnats or flies might get into the cup. In the Fragments to Calmet, we are informed that there is a modern Arabic proverb to this effect, "He swallowed an elephant, but was strangled by a fly."
Tipulidae — Crane-flies
The larvae of a species of Agaric-Gnat (Mycetophila) live in society, and emigrate in files in a very soldier-like manner. First goes one, next follow two, then three, etc., so as to exhibit a singular serpentine appearance. The common people of Germany call this file Heerwurm, and, it is said, view them with great dread, regarding them as ominous of war.
Maupertuis, in describing his ascent to Mount Pulinge, in Lapland, says: "They had to fell a whole wood of large trees, and the Flies (most probably Tipulidae) attack'd 'em with that fury, that the very soldiers, tho' hardened to the greatest fatigues, were obliged to wrap up their faces, or cover them with tar. These insects poison'd their victuals, for no sooner was a dish serv'd, but it was quite covered with them." Maupertuis, in another place, says: "These Flies make Lapland less tolerable in the summer than the cold does in the winter." The severity with which the Tipulidae torment the Laplanders is attested also by Acerby, Linnaeus, De Geer, and Reaumur.
Muscidae — Flies
Among the instances recorded of Flies appearing in immense numbers, the following are the most remarkable:
"When the Creole frigate was lying in the outer roads of Buenos Ayres, in 1819, at a distance of six miles from the land, her decks and rigging were suddenly covered with thousands of Flies and grains of sand. The sides of the vessel had just received a fresh coat of paint, to which the insects adhered in such numbers as to spot and disfigure the vessel, and to render it necessary partially to renew the paint. Capt. W. H. Smyth was obliged to repaint his vessel, the Adventure, in the Mediterranean, from the same cause. He was on his way from Malta to Tripoli, when a southern wind blowing from the coast of Africa, then one hundred miles distant, drove such myriads of Flies upon the fresh paint that not the smallest point was left unoccupied by the insects."
"In May, 1699, at Kerton," records Ralph Thoresby, "in Lincolnshire, the sky seemed to darken north-westward at a little distance from the town, as though it had been a shower of hailstones or snow; but when it came near the town, it appeared to be a prodigious swarm of Flies, which went with such a force toward the south east that persons were forced to turn their backs of them."
On the morning of the 11th of September, 1831, a small dipterous insect, belonging to Meigen's genus Chlorops, and nearly allied to, if not identical with, his C. laeta, appeared suddenly, and in such immense quantities, in one of the upper rooms of the Provost's Lodge, in King's College, Cambridge, that the greater part of the ceiling toward the window of the room was so thickly covered as not to be visible. They entered by a window looking due north, while the wind was blowing steadily N. N. W. So it appears they came from the direction of the River Cam, or rather came with its current.
In the summer of 1834, which season was remarkable in England for its swarms and shoals of insects, the air was constantly filled, says a writer in The Mirror, with millions of small delicate Flies, and the sea in many places, particularly on the Norfolk coasts, was perfectly blackened by the amazing shoals. The length of these masses was not determined; but they were, it is asserted, at least a league broad. It is said the oldest fishermen of those seas never remembered having seen or heard of such a phenomenon.
Capt. Dampier calls the natives of New Holland the "poor winking people of New Holland," and concludes his description of them with the following observations: "Their eyelids are always half closed, to keep the Flies out of their eyes, they being so troublesome here that no fanning will keep them from coming to one's face; and without the assistance of both hands to keep them off they will creep into one's nostrils, and mouth, too, if the lips are not shut very close. So that from their infancy, being thus annoyed with these insects, they do never open their eyes as other people, and therefore they cannot see far, unless they hold up their heads, as if they were looking at something over them."
In a house at Zaffraan-craal, Dr. Sparrman suffered so much from the common House-fly, Musca domestica, which, in the south of Africa, frequently appears in such prodigious numbers as to cover almost entirely the walls and ceilings, that, as he asserts, it was impossible for him to keep within doors for any length of time. To get rid of these troublesome pests, the natives resort to a very ingenious contrivance. It is thus related by the above-mentioned traveler: "Bunches of herbs are hung up all over the ceiling, on which the Flies settle in great numbers; a person then takes a linen net or bag, of a considerable depth, fixed to a long handle, and, inclosing in it every bunch, shakes it about, so that the Flies fall down to the bottom of the bag: when, after several applications of it in this manner, they are killed by a pint or a quart at a time, by dipping the bag into scalding hot water."
Rhasis, Avicen, and Albertus say: "Bury the tail of a wolf in the house, and the Flies will not come into it."
Berytius says: "Flies will never rest on dumb animals if they are rubbed with the fat of a lion."
Pliny says: "At Rome yee shall not have a Flie or dog that will enter into the chappell of Hercules standing in the beast market."
Plutarch, in the Eighth Book of his Symposiacs, learnedly discourses upon the tamableness of the Fly. His opinion is that it cannot be tamed.
Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, says: "Many ways doth nature also by Flies play with the fancies of men in dreams, if we may credit Apomasaris in his Apotelesms. For the Indians, Persians, and Egyptians do teach, that if Flies appear to us in our sleep, it doth signifie an herauld at arms, or an approaching disease. If a general of an army, or a chief commander, dream that at such or such a place he should see a great company of Flies, in that very place, wherever it shall be, there he shall be in anguish and grief for his soldiers that are slain, his army routed, and the victory lost. If a mean or ordinary man dream the like, he shall fall into a violent fever, which likely may cost him his life. If a man dream in his sleep that Flies went into his mouth or nostrils, he is to expect with great sorrow and grief imminent destruction from his enemies."
In an English North country chap-book, entitled the Royal Dream-book, we find: "To dream of Flies or other vermin, denotes enemies of all sorts."
"When we see," says Hollingshed, "a great number of Flies in a yeare, we naturallie iudge it like to be a great plague."
Among the deep-sea fishermen of Greenock (Scotland), there is a most comical idea that if a Fly falls into a glass from which any one has been drinking, or is about to drink, it is considered a sure omen of good luck to the drinker, and is always noticed as such by the company. Has this any connection with our saying of "taking a glass with a Fly in it?"
If Flies die in great numbers in a house, it is believed by the common people to be a sure sign of death to some one in the family occupying it; if throughout the country, an omen of general pestilence. It is positively asserted that Flies always die before the breaking out of the cholera, and believed that they die of this disease.
Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, says: "When the Flies bite harder than ordinary, making at the face and eyes of men, they foretell rain or wet weather, from whence Politian hath it:
Thirsty for blood the Fly returns, And with his sting the skin he burns.
Perhaps before rain they are most hungry, and therefore, to asswage their hunger, do more diligently seek after their food. This also is to be observed, that a little before a showre or a storme comes, the Flies descend from the upper region of the air to the lowest, and do fly, as it were, on the very surface of the earth. Moreover, if you see them very busie about sweet-meats or unguents, you may know that it will presently be a showre. But if they be in all places many and numerous, and shall so continue long (if Alexander Benedict and Johannes Damascenus say true), they foretell a plague or pestilence, because so many of them could not be bred of a little putrefaction of the air." Elsewhere Moufet states: "Neither are Flies begotten of dung only, but of any other filthy matter putrefied by heat in the summer time, and after the same way spoken of before, as Grapaldus and Lonicerus have very well noted."
Willsford, in his Nature's Secrets, p. 135, says: "Flies in the spring or summer season, if they grow busier or blinder than at other times, or that they are observed to shroud themselves in warm places, expect then quickly to follow either hail, cold storms of rain, or very much wet weather; and if these little creatures are noted early in autumn to repair into their winter quarters, it presages frosty mornings, cold storms, with the approach of hoary winter. Atomes of Flies swarming together, and sporting themselves in the sunbeams, is a good omen of fair weather."