REMEDIAL MEASURES
We have seen in Chapter VIII that the checks which Nature has imposed
upon the prolific breeding of the house-fly have been insufficient to
protect civilised mankind from ancient times continuously up to the
present day. This defect need now no longer be endured; but, alas,
communities and individuals are ever slow to be warned, and averse to
practise newly advised methods of sanitation. In few other directions is
there greater promise of advancement in general public health and
comfort than by preventive measures against the breeding of the
house-fly. Effective measures comprehensible to all who consider the
subject are so easy of application, that, if universally carried out,
the house-fly might become a rare insect in a very few years' time. It
is, however, of fundamental importance that the public should be made to
comprehend the case; else the power necessary for enforcing suitable
regulations by the local authorities will not be obtainable.
Preventive measures must constitute the supreme objective of an anti-fly
crusade. The habits of the house-fly and its life-history make it clear
how successful breeding may be prevented. The breeding places are local
and accessible; the food substances of the larvæ are capable of being
put under control; and the maggot stage is the opportune period wherein
the fly plague is most obviously open to attack.
In all town and suburban parishes a house to house collection of
domestic refuse and garbage must be made, not weekly, but bi-weekly in
summer, and the material must be cremated in a dust destructor furnace
within a few days of its collection; thus neither larvæ nor pupæ therein
would survive; no alternative disposal otherwise than by cremation
should be attempted. Furthermore, and above all else, only refuse
collecting bins of an authorised pattern should be employed. Contrary to
the prevalent idea these should not be fly-proof and not have air-tight
covers; they should freely admit air all round and should encourage the
access of breeding flies. They should stand preferably in open daylight
places and should be egg-traps for flies which, thus encouraged, would
hardly ever deposit their eggs elsewhere; the result would be that all
maggots and pupæ would be inevitably cremated.
It may be objected that, if open dust-bins are used, house-flies after
visiting the same may return to the house and subsequently contaminate
food in the larder. There will be such a possibility, but the danger
thereof can be minimised, and would in fact be nearly automatically
cured, as prospective fly progeny perished. Furthermore, there are
circumstances which indicate that the said danger would not be great,
and anyhow nothing comparable to the baneful effects which are now
endured. The worst germs are not those of newly discarded food remnants;
the commonest and well-known bad smelling germ of ordinarily "tainted"
meat, which is exceptionally attractive to the house-fly and the
blue-bottle, is fortunately, after cooking, not so dangerous as some of
those other deleterious micro-organisms mentioned in the last chapter.
Taking one thing with another the balance of benefits and disadvantages
will incline overwhelmingly in favour of open dust-bins, wherein food
remnants may purposely become fly-blown. An improved dust-bin lid has
been contrived which combines with the cover a centrally held wire-gauze
"balloon" fly-trap, wherein flies will congregate and be imprisoned when
attempting to leave.
Unfortunately air-tight dust-bins have been very generally recommended
as a grand device of hygienic value; hence it is most necessary that
unthinking people at large should be informed how much better it is to
use open bins which can catch and secure for destruction prospective
fly-broods. It may be asked—why not trap and kill the breeding females?
The reply is that to do so will be good, as is to be explained in the
next chapter; but contrivances for the latter procedure are apt to be
less effectively put into general operation.
The fly swarms of mews, arising from accumulations of stable manure,
will be difficult to alleviate without stringently enforced measures,
but it is a mistaken notion to believe that town flies are bred in
stables to such an extent that the invaders of our dwellings and town
restaurants, shops, and markets, are merely or mainly the overflow of
the mews. The concentration of many kinds of flies is very dense around
ill-kept mews, and in midsummer-time a large percentage will be true
house-flies. Frequent removal and cremation of stable manure would be
quite effectual, but there is reason to think that, if proper care be
taken, no such drastic procedure as cremation will be absolutely
necessary, unless perhaps for the months of July and August.
There are two matters involved in sanitary stable reform—one is the
proper structure of the stable floor and the treatment of the litter
whilst in use for bedding; the other is the disposal of the horse
droppings and the discarded litter called stable manure. If the floor be
good and the bedding be well kept and fairly dry, which is often not the
case, then the effective breeding of flies will be in the dung-pit and
the external manure heap. From a sanitary point of view these latter are
indeed almost everywhere ill-kept.
The general fate of maggots living on the floor of well-kept horse-boxes
is to end their lives drowned in the drains to which they descend, when
or before they pupate.
In these days of motor-cars and fewer horses the horticulturist
everywhere is eager to buy good stuff; now stable manure to be good must
be fresh and free from the garbage with which stable men wantonly
corrupt the same, instead of consigning such extraneous refuse to a
proper separate dust-bin for collection and cremation. So much can be
done remuneratively with a regular supply of clean fresh manure, that it
seems almost worth while transgressing the proper limits of this booklet
and writing chapters on mushroom culture and on the intensive hot-bed
cultivation, with the aid of "cloches" or bell glasses, called French
gardening. It may be thought that such cultures will of themselves breed
swarms of flies. Though such is not necessarily the case, the liability
by common carelessness is very great.
The expert horticulturist has a special preparatory treatment for fresh
manure intended for hot-beds; new manure in heaps rapidly "heats," and
is ærated by being turned over two or three times on separate days
before being packed close for the hot-bed. This process of treatment
rather disagrees with the breeding of the house-fly. Mushrooms and all
the fungus tribe breathe by inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide;
and so it happens that even insects which delight to feed on mushrooms,
are somewhat repelled by the special atmosphere of very actively growing
mycelium or spawn.
The amateur entomologist and the nature-student will observe that the
flies which pester the gardener at work are mainly other than the common
house-fly. The reader, nevertheless, will like to know if something more
cannot be done to stable manure for exterminating maggots, whether of
house-flies or the many various filth flies, already hatched and growing
therein. Well, "something" indeed can be done by the use of some
insecticide. Hitherto chloride of lime has been employed, but the most
approved insecticide for the purpose is a solution of iron sulphate—two
pounds in one gallon of water; this is said not to deteriorate the
horticultural value of stable manure. However, in fine weather, the
spreading out and drying of freshly received manure practically rids it
of fly maggots, which cannot survive this simple procedure. The mere
burial of fly-blown dung and stable litter without prior treatment is
quite inefficient. Insanitary heaps of neglected manure, which terribly
swarm with maggots, much deteriorate in horticultural value.
Farmyards and the scattered dwellings of rural districts remain to be
considered, and no doubt herein the difficulty is great, but not
hopeless. The latter will be persuaded to follow suit when the good
effects of town and suburban policy become apparent.
Something more than usual is desirable for the protection of cattle from
the breeze and the œstrid flies at midsummer. The latter, at all events,
could be easily exterminated by giving butterfly nets and encouragement
to children, who would enjoy the fun. Although the close approach of
strangers may alarm grazing animals, after the latter have galloped away
a very good chance will occur of capturing the slow flying gravid female
worble-fly with a butterfly net, or of felling her to the ground with a
suitable instrument; if missed on the first attempt, other chances can
be got again and again by waiting until the said same fly has returned
to threaten her intended victims. The writer has often succeeded in
felling the slow flying gravid female worble-fly with a mere walking
stick. It is strange that no farmers' entomological friend has hitherto
suggested so common-sense a remedy as butterfly nets, which should be of
a dark green colour. A company of our popular boy scouts, marching in a
skirmishing line on an August Bank Holiday (or a preceding Saturday),
over ground where grazing animals are observed showing behaviour
conspicuously indicative of attacks by œstrid flies, would enjoy doing
grandly useful execution. Every capture should be substantially
rewarded.
In an organised campaign of house-fly extermination it may rather be
expected that the principal trouble will be with the stable men of
unsanitary mews. In the United States of America very stringent bye-laws
have been made and enforced. Some of these, perhaps, deserve
consideration for adoption, with judicious improvements, in England, but
the policy of the OPEN DUST-BIN _and_ CREMATION raises new hopes of
success far beyond any advantages hitherto obtained in America.