Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/405

 AND FLIES

During recent years we have become so well educated concerning the ways of the bouse fly, its disgusting habits of promiscuous feeding, now in the garbage can or some- where worse, and next at our table or on the baby's face, and we have learned so much about its menace as a pos- sible carrier of disease, that it is scarcely necessary to en- large here upon the flv's undesirability as a domestic companion. The most serious accusation against the bouse fly is that, owing to the many kinds of places it frequents with- out regard to sanitary conditions, and toits indiscriminate feeding habits, there is always a chance of its feet, body, mouth parts, and alimentary canal being contaminated with the germs of disease, particularly those of typhoid lever, tuberculosis, and dysentery. It bas been demon- strated that files can carry germs about with them which

will grow when given a proper medium, and likewise that files taken at large may be covered with bacteria, a single fly sometimes being loaded with millions of them. The wisdom of sanitary measures for the protection of food from contamination by files can not, therefore, be questioned. There is one form of insect villainy, however, of which the house fly is hot guilty; the structure of its mouth parts clears it of all accusa- tions of biting. And yet we hear it often asserted by per-

FIG. I8 4. Head of the stable fly, Stomoxys calcitrans .4nt, antenna; PIp, maxillary pal- pus; Prb, proboscis

sons of unquestioned veracity that they have been bitten by bouse files. The case is one of mistaken identification and hot of imagination on the part of the plaintiff; the

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INSECTS