A PREMIER NATURALIST [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Sgt,—In your issue of September 17th Sir W. Beach Thomas States in his Country Notes under the above heading that hover-flies and sham bees are normally parasitic on genuine bees, and queries how it is they are seen in numbers in the absence of their hosts. Very many flies are parasitic in their early stages, but this is not the case with either of the groups mentioned by Sir W. Beach Thomas. The larvae of the hover-flies feed on aphids, and those of the bee-flies on organisms to be found in liquid manure in the neighbourhood of farmyards, in cesspools and such-like localities. They are known to naturalists as " rat-tailed maggots."
The query should in my mind rather be : "Knowing the type of conditions suitable for breeding, whence come the numerous specimens of bee-flies seen every autumn in our modern sanitary towns and suburbs? "—Yours faithfully,
6 Footscray Road, Eltham, S.E. 9. H. W. ANDREWS.
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