lesh
fly from bringing forth her offspring, both of them knowing that their
newborn young are incapable of piercing the obstacle.

Paper is equally successful in our strife against the Moths, those
plagues of our furs and clothes. To keep away these wholesale ravages,
people generally use camphor, naphthalene, tobacco, bunches of lavender
and other strong-scented remedies. Without wishing to malign those
preservatives, we are bound to admit that the means employed are none
too effective. The smell does very little to prevent the havoc of the
moths.

I would therefore counsel our housewives, instead of all this chemist's
stuff, to use newspapers of a suitable shape and size. Take whatever you
wish to protect--your furs, your flannel or your clothes--and pack each
article carefully in a newspaper, joining the edges with a double fold,
well pinned. If this joining is properly done, the Moth will never get
inside. Since my advice has been taken and this method employed in my
household, the old damage has never been repeated.

To return to the fly. A piece of meat is hidden in a jar under a layer
of fine, dry sand, a finger's-breadth thick. The jar has a wide mouth
and is left quite open. Let whoever come that will, attracted by the
smell. The Bluebottles are not long in inspecting what I have prepared
for them: they enter the jar, go out and come back again, inquiring into
the invisible thing revealed by its fragrance. A diligent watch enables
me to see them fussing about, exploring the sandy expanse, tapping it
with their feet, sounding it with their proboscis. I leave the visitors
undisturbed for a fortnight or three weeks. None of them lays any eggs.

This is a repetition of what the paper bag, with its dead bird, showed
me. The flies refuse to lay on the sand, apparently for the same
reasons. The paper was considered an obstacle which the frail vermin
would not be able to overcome. With sand, the case is worse. Its
grittiness would hurt the newborn weaklings, its dryness would absorb
the moisture indispensable to their movements. Later, when preparing for
the metamorphosis, when their strength has come to them, the grubs will
dig the earth quite well and be able to descend; but, at the start,
that would be very dangerous for them. Knowing these difficulties, the
mothers, however greatly tempted by the smell, abstain from breeding. As
a matter of fact, after long waiting, fearing lest some packets of eggs
may have es