Below the oblong, compound eyes are the sharp mouthparts, which in the female are provided with lancets, which enable her to puncture the skin of warm-blooded animals and suck their blood. It is curious that the female should have such habits, while the males are content to lap up nectar from the flowers.
This jet black, loud-buzzing creature flew into my laboratory and made so much noise that I was forced to kill her. This photograph of her is nine times her real diameter.
She belongs to a large and important family of flies, whose females make the lives of men and animals miserable in many parts of the world by their bites, which form most annoying wounds.
A GREEN-HEADED HORSE FLY
(Tabanus punctifer, O. S.)
There are nearly two hundred species of horse flies in North America, and this creature represents one of the commonest forms. It doubtless hatched out somewhere on the edge of the brook which flows through my place in Maryland, and its larval self fed upon other insect larvæ or on the snails and slugs it found itself among.
The bands of iridescent green and copper and purple across its enormous eyes made it a beautiful creature to look upon.