| Show BEWARE OF THE FLY the common house fly Is usually hatched ln a manure pile it takes its first meal around the barn somewhere perhaps breakfasting on the pus oozing from a wound on a borso or cow it probably stops at the open privy vault for dinner and gets get around to the house toward evening to make its supper on your table its feet are laden with some of the stuff on which it breakfasted and din dined edIt it trails its slimy way over the bread and meat and sometimes meets its end in your cup or coffee or on its way to the dining room it may find the baby asleep and proceed to wipe its nasty feet on the babas sweet lips that is not very nice reading is it and yet we could make it 11 a good deal nastier and keep within the bounds of truth they fly is by ill all odds the nastiest thing we have about us it breeds in filth it feeds on filth it spreads filth wherever it goes it carries all sorts of nastiness hastiness on its feet and in its mouth and deposits I 1 it t on you or on what you eat the very fly that you saw sampling the contents of the swill barrel on your way to the house may be the one that walks over your pie a few minutes afterward erward itt and that is not all ot of the story the fly carries hundreds of thousands ot of disease germs it spreads typhoid fever tuberculosis diarrhoea and we do not know how many other diseases on the spread 0 ot f typhoid dr brown the health officer ot of cincin nati ohio says unless the most stringent measures are immediately taken for the proper ot of these typhoid discharges they become almost at once the haven tor for innumerable flies the bodies ot of which harbor innumerable typhoid germs the alternate visitations of the common house fly from the latrine trench I 1 or privy his natural habitation to the kitchen and dining rooms affords most ample ampie opportunity for the infection ot of our food and drink particularly ot of milk this illustration is by no means fanciful or far farfetched fetched the commiss commission ion appointed by the government to investigate the typhoid epidemic which occurred among our soldiers during the spanish american war of which commission vaughan of ann arbor was chairman reported that the infection of food supplies by means of flies was probably of even more importance than the infection of drinking water dr D 1 D johnson of new york city says hitherto the fly has been regarded complacently as a harmless 1111 nuisance I 1 and considered to be an annoying creature with great persistence pers istance and excessive familiarity re regarded added in the light of recent knowledge the fly is ia more dangerous than the tiger or the cobra bobr a worse than that ile he is at least in our climate much diore more to be feared than the mosquito and may easily be classed the world over as the most dangerous animal on earth it has been for some time thoroughly well de ions a t he is one of the chi chief f agencies in the spread ot of asiatic cholera we now know him to be the source of a high percentage of the cases of typhoid fever and the chief disseminator of diarrhoeal diseases from which about children die annually in new york city alone from all parts of the country comes similar testimony the fly has been tried at the bar and found guilty in cities which have active health departments part ments an outbreak of typhoid is at once followed by a rigid inspection of the dairy from which the milk has been furnished dr L 0 howard chief of the bureau of entomology department of agriculture says the ille insect we now call the house fly should in the future be termed typhoid fly ny in order to call direct attention to the danger of allowing it to continue to breed unchecked from a bulletin on the subject of house flies by dr howard we make the following excerpts the house fly commonly lays its eggs upon horse manure this substance seems to be its favorite larval food it will deposit eggs on cow manure but we have not been able to rear it in this substance it will also breed in human excrement and from this habit it becomes very dangerous to the health of human beings carrying as it does the germs of intestinal tes diseases such as typhoid fever and cholera choler a from excreta to food supplies it will ilso also lay its eggs upon other decaying vegetable and animal mater material I 1 al but of the flies that infest dwelling houses both in cities and on farms a vast proportion come from horse manure at salem massachusetts packard states that he bred a generation in fourteen days in horse manure the duration of the egg state is twenty four hours the larval state from five to seven days and the pupa state from five to seven days at washington the writer had found in midsummer that each female lays about eggs which hatch in eight hours the larval period lasting five days and the pupa five days making the total time for the development of the generation ten tell days this was at the end of june the periods of development vary with the climate and with the season and the insect hibernates in the condition in manure or at the surface of the ground under a manure heip heap it also hibernates in houses as adult hiding in crevices the periods of development were found to be about as follows egg from disposition to hatching one third of a day hatching of larva I 1 to 0 first molt one day first to seco second I 1 id molt one day second molt to pupation three days pupation to issuing of the he adult five days total life round approximately ten days there is thus abundance of time for the development of twelve or thirteen generations erat ions ln jn the climate of washington every summer the number of eggs laid by an individual individuals fa 9 As is undoubtedly h large arge ilver averaging aging about 12 a and n d the enormous numbers in whiple the insects occur Is thus plainly accounted for especially when we consider the abundance and universal occur ance of appropriate larval food in order to ascertain the numbers in which house fly larvae occur in horse hors e manure plies piles a quarter of a pound of rather well infested horse manure was taken on august ath and in ill it were counted larvae and pup luparia pu paria arfa this would make about 1200 house flies to the pound of manure this however can not be taken as an all average since no larvae are found in ili perhaps the greater part of ordinary horse manure piles neither however does it show the limit of what can be found since about 2050 luparia were found in less than one cubic inch of manure taken from a spot two inches below the surface of the pile where the larvae had congregated gre gated in immense numbers on account of the confirmation of its mouth parts the house fly cau can not bite yet no impression Is stronger in the minds of most people than that this insect does occasionally bite this impression is due to the frequent occurrence occur ence in houses of another fly which Is called the stable fly and which while closely resembling the house fly so closely in fact as to deceive anyone but an entomologist differs from it in the important particulars that its mouth parts are formed for piercing th the e skin it is perhaps second in poi point n t of abundance to the house fly in in most ost portions of the northeastern states well you ask what are we going to do about it that is more difficult to answer in the country than in the city in towns and cities the fight is being directed against the breeding places boards of health are enforcing sanitation in ili the thel country we cannot altogether prevent flies from breeding but we can reduce the number very materially As above noted flies breed mostly in horse manure we can call prevent manure piles very easily by keeping the manure spreader or lacking that the wagon at the stable door throw the manure directly into it each morning and take it with you as you go to the field this will very greatly reduce the number of flies then protect yourself by keeping the breeding places as tar far from the house ause as possible by protecting the in milk ilk and food from them and by thoroughly screening the house use screens on every door and every window vin jow use screens on the milk house or wherever the milk is kept lay in a stock of 0 fly paper and use it freely aspeci ally in the pantry kitchen and dining room above all things enclose and thoroughly screen the privy vault be especially careful to keep things clean around the house the fly does not spread much typhoid in the country simply because there is not much typhoid there to spread but we have plenty of tuberculosis bercu losis in the country and we have no doubt the fly spreads it as well as other diseases beware of the fly deseret farmer |
