. Insects, their ways and means of living. Insects. MOSQUITOES AND FLIES During recent years we have become so well educated concerning the ways of the house 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 fly's undesirability as a domestic companion. The most serious accusation against the house fly is that, owing to the many kinds of places it frequents with- out r
. Insects, their ways and means of living. Insects. MOSQUITOES AND FLIES During recent years we have become so well educated concerning the ways of the house 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 fly's undesirability as a domestic companion. The most serious accusation against the house fly is that, owing to the many kinds of places it frequents with- out regard to sanitary conditions, and to its 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 fever, tuberculosis, and dysentery. It has been demon- strated that flies can carry germs about with them which will grow when given a proper medium, and likewise that flies 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 flies can not, therefore, be questioned. There is one form of insect villainy, however, of which the house fly is not guilty; the structure of its mouth parts clears it of all accusa- tions of biting. And yet we hear it often asserted by per- sons of unquestioned veracity that they have been bitten by house flies. The case is one of mistaken identification and not of imagination on the part of the plaintiff; the [347]. Fig. 184. Head of the stable fly, Stomoxys calcitrans Anty antenna; Pfp> maxillary pal- pus; Prby proboscis. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Snodgrass, R. E. (Robert E. ), 1875-1962. New York Smithson
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Keywords: ., bookauthorsnodgrassrerobert, bookcentury1900, booksubjectinsects
