DEADLY HOUSEFLY

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 November 1929, Page 2

DEADLY HOUSEFLY

MOST DANGEROUS FOE. “Kill that fly” is the universal cry, and we wonder why science cannot put an end to all tormenting insects. That is a question often asked by serious thinkers, who realise that the greatest fight for the mastery of the earth has yet to come. Th housefly is without doubt one of our most dangerous foes, for it goes on all sorts of filth and rubbish heaps. The wasp, which is looked upon as another pest, is really more a friend to man, in that at least it kills numerous flies and other hurtful insects. An observer of a small wasp’s nest found their daily average of flies brought' .home from the beginning of the season was over two thousand, and as the season advanced their number’ might be multiplied by twelve. It is so often the insect we fear most who is a friend in disguise. Even mosquitoes have their use, and except for them our pools would be* overcrowded with life and fluid tombs of corpses. When in the water in a larval form they devour substances which would otherwise cause coruption. 1 But it is when they “put on wings” that they become dangerous and carry microbes fatal alike to human and animal life. For centuries the Anopheles and Steymyia mosquito has held at bay all efforts of the white man to open up the Dark Continent. So beware of the winged darkness of destruction.