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Show n BEWARE OF THE FLY. 1 . The common Jiousc fly is usually r. hatched out in a manure pile. It takes F its first meal around the barn sonic- 1 where, perhaps 'breakfasting on the fj pus oozing from a wound on a horse j or cow. It probably stops at the op'en privy vault for dinner and gets around to the house toward evening to make its supper on your table. Its P feet arc laden with some of the stuff f on which it breakfasted and dined. It I trails its slimy way over the bread and meat and sometimes meets it.. ' end in your cup of milk 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 baby's sweet lips. That is not very nice reading, is it? And yet we could make it a good dea nastier and keep .well within the bounds of truth. The fly is by all odds the nastiest thing we have abouc us. It breeds in filth; it feeds on filth; it spreads filth wherever it goes. It carries all sorts of nastiness on its feet and its mouth and deposits it 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. And that is not all of the story. The fly carries hundreds of thousands of disease germs. It spreads typhoid jj fgyr, tuberculosis, diarrhoqa, and we . 1 do not know how many other diseases. 1 On the spread of typhoid Dr. Brown, the health officer of Cincinnati, Ohio, says: "Unless the most stringent measures I arc immediately taken for the proper disinfection of these (typhoid) discharges dis-charges they become almost at once the haven for innumerable flics, the bodies of which harbor innumerable h typhoid germs. The alternate visita- 1 tions of the common house fly from I the latrine, trench, or privy, his nat ural habitation, to the kitchen and dining rooms, afford most ample opportunity op-portunity for the infection of our food and drink, particularly of milk. This illustration is 'by no means fanci ful or far-fetched. The commission appointed by the government to investigate inves-tigate the typhoid epidemic which occurred oc-curred among our soldiers during the Spanish-American war, of which commission com-mission Vaughan, of Ann Arbor, was il chairman, reported that infection of Jfood supplies by means of flics was probably of even more importance J than the infection of drinking water." Dr. D. D. Johnson, of New York City, says: "Hitherto the fly has been regarded complacently as a harmless nuisance, and considered to be an annoying ... 1 creature with great pcrsistancc and j excessive familiarity. Regarded in the ' light of recent knowledge the fly is 1 more dangerous than the tiger or the cobra. Worse than that, he is, at least in our climate, much more to be feared than the mosquito and may easily be classed, the world over, as the most dangerous animal on earth. Tt has been for some time thoroughly well demonstrated that he is one of the chief agencies1 in the spread of Asiatic cholera. We now know him to be the source of t high percentage of the case of typhoid fever and the chief disseminator of diarrhocal diseases, fromi which about 7,000 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 depart-ments an outbreak of typhoid is a once followed by a rigid inspection of the dairy from which the milk ha3 been furnished. Dr. L O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Entomology, Department of Agriculture, says: "The insect we now call the 'house fly' should in the future be termed the 'typhoid fly,' in order to call direct attention to the danger of allowing it lo continue to breed unchecked." From a bulletin on the subject of "House Flics" by Dr. Howard we make the following excerpts: "The house fly commonly lays its eggs upon horse manure. This substance sub-stance seems lo be its favorite larval food. It will deposit eggs on cow manure, but we have not been able to rear it in this substance. Itwi.l H also breed in human excrement, and H from this habit it becomes very dan jH gcrotts to the health of human beings, M carrying, as it docs, the germs of in- M tcstinal diseases such as typhoid fev- H (Continued on page 8) H BEWARE OF THE FLY. (Continued from page 5) er and cholera from excreta to food supplies. It will also lay its eggs upon other decaying vegetable and animal material, but of the flics tint infest dwelling houses, both in cities ancl 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 twenty-four hours, the larval state from five to seven days, and the pupal state from five to seven days. At Washington Washing-ton the writer has found in midsummer mid-summer that each female lays about 120 eggs, which hatch in eight hours, the larva period lasting five days and the pupa five days, making the total time for the "development of the generation gen-eration ten 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 puparium condition in manure or at the surface of the ground under a manure heap. It also hibernates in houses as adult, hiding in crevices. W "The periods- of development were f- found to 'be about as follows: Egg til from deposition to hatching, one-third of a day; hatching of larva to first molt, one day; first to second molt, one day; second molt to pupation, three days; pupation to issuing of the adult, five days; total life r.ound, approximately ap-proximately ten days. There is thus abundance of time for the development develop-ment of twelve or thirteen generations genera-tions in the climate of Washington every summer. The number of eggs laid by an individual fly is undoubtedly large, averaging about 12, and the enormous numbers in which the insects in-sects occur is thus plainly accounted for, especially when we consider the abundance and universal occurrence of appropriate larval food. In order to ascertain the numbers in which house fly larv?e occur in horse manure piles a quarter of a pound of rather well infested horse manure was taken on August 9th and in it were counted 160 larvae and 146 puparia. This would make about 1,200 house flies 0 the pound of manure. This, however, can not be taken as an average, since no larvae a- found in perhaps the greater part of ordinary horse manure piles. Neither, however, does it show the limit of what can be found, since about 2050 puparia Were found in less than one ubic inch of manure taken from a spgt two inches' betow the sur face of the pile where the larvae had congregated in immense numbers. "On account of the conformation of its mouth parts, the house fly can not bite, yet no impression is stronger u the mjnds of most people than that this insect docs occasionally bite. This impression is due to the frequent occurrence 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 de-ceive anyone but an entomologist), differs from it in the important particular par-ticular that its mouth parts arc fprmed for piercing the skin. It is perhaps second in point of abundance to the house fly in most portions of the northeastern states." , "Well," you ask, "what arc we going to do about it?" That is more difficult diffi-cult to answer in the country than in the city. In towns and cities the fight is being directed against the breeding places. Boards1 of health arc enforcing enforc-ing sanitation.. In the country we can not altogether altogeth-er prevent flies from breeding, but wc can reduce the number very materially. materi-ally. As above noted, flics breed mostly in horse manure. Wc can pr-s vent manure piles very easily by keeping the manure spread 'r, or lacking lack-ing 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 roducc the number of flics. Then protect pro-tect yourself by keeping the breeding places as' fav from the house as possi hie, by protecting the milk and food from them and by thoroughly screening screen-ing the house. Use screens on every door and every window. Use screens on the milk house or wherever the milk is kept. Lay in a stock of fly paper and use it freely, especially in the pantry, kitchen, and dining room. Above all things enclose and thoroughly thor-oughly 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 tuber-culosis in the country, and we have no doubt the fly spreads it as well as other diseases. Bajc Qf thj ly, |