diamond, only ever so many more of them. I can feel, and I can smell food with these two feather plumes on my head.
"No, indeed, I never fold my wings, when I sit down, as foolish moths do. I keep them ready for business. Aren't they pretty? I make them of silver gauze, and paint them with bronze and purple. Do you notice cream-tinted scales behind them? Those are balancers. If I didn't have them I'd tumble head over heels when I tried to fly. I can tilt my head, too. It is set right down on my shoulders, on a kind of pivot.
"No, I never have dyspepsia, thank you! You see, I make syrup or broth out of everything I eat. The food goes into a little mill, with spiny teeth, to be chewed and mixed with something to digest it. Then it goes into a little bag of a stomach. I can tell you how not to have lung troubles, too. Don't have any lungs. I breathe through holes in my skin like the leaves on the trees. I fill little air bladders and pass the air back to blood vessels.
A fly's foot magnified.
"If you really want to know how wonderfully I am made you ought to have a glass that would magnify me a hundred times. I have three silver girdles across my chest, or thorax, a yellow band on my abdomen and some golden spots. All six of my legs are fastened to the thorax. But if there is one thing I am vain of it's my feet. Just look at them. The legs are jointed, and on the last joint of each is a pair of claws like a lobster's. But they close over a pad or cushion covered with knobby hairs. All those hairs are sticky, and cling to things. Really, the smoother you make your walls the better I like them. A gold picture frame, or a nice white gas globe just suits me for an evening stroll, or a bed to sleep on, upside down. But every thing sticks to those feet! I can't keep them clean, although I wipe them on every bit of bread or food you leave out for door-mats."
"Ah, so that's why you bring typhoid fever into the house, naughty fly!"
"Well!" with a little bristle of wings. "No wonder! You ought to see where I have to bring up my babies. I can't carry them around, all legs and no arms as I am, now can I? I have to lay my eggs in warm moist places around stables and in garbage cans, or
