SWAT THE FLY

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 October 1926, Page 7

SWAT THE FLY

WHAT SCIENTISTS CLAIM.

According to scientists of the United States Department of Agriculture, the greatest menace to health to-day in the common house fly. This insidious little insect is charged with being the cause of more deaths than all wars. Quite as startling as any of the other facts that have been brought out by scientific research is that, with all the information broadcast each season about these pests, there is still a common disregard to these warnings. The result has been that there is annual toll of death that might easily have been lessened. The scientists indict the house fly for many epidemics. For the fly, they explain, transmits typhoid fever, tuberculosis, infantile paralysis, dysentery, cholera, and many other diseases of infants and adults. The fly is dangerous because it feeds indiscriminately on food and refuse. Its sticky, filthy foot pads and covering of fine hair transmit bacteria from refuse to food. They assert that a single fly may carry from 500 to 10,000 geriii&. In a single season, according 11 to these entomologists, a pair of flies may produce five trillion, five hundred million descendants—a figure that staggers imagination. Of course, l ihe answer to this, as they point out; is more vigilance on the part of communities as well as the individual. The flies must be killed.