FLIES AS DEATH-BRINGERS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVI, Issue XLV, 17 June 1911, Page 4

FLIES AS DEATH-BRINGERS.

THE MEDIA OF DISEASE.

IT has but lately been realised that the science of entomology has a ,widesprea-d application, even to tho itfe and deaili t'f humanity owr wide tracts of country. A general idea of the .ravages ■caused by these flies which cany tnii animal blood parasites of many of tho •distinctly tropical- dis-ea.scs may be- gained by the chapter 011 ".Insects a-s Ageii'ts of Disease," in F. Maa-tin, Duncan's book, "Our Insect Friends and Foes." There was a- time when tho entomologist was rogard'ed as a,n. ami-. a-Tj'le, slightly eccentric parson, with a butterfly net and a large vocabulary of Greek and .Latin words. .Recent researches in the .tropics must have Largely dispelled that view. Regarded as a hobby alone. entomology is full of very beautiful adaptations and romantic histories'; regarded as a 'protection, of mainkind, his domestic animate aind cattle, and his "bread supply from.' myriads of dleadly enemies, it hecoimiesi something more. In Western Uganda, during the last ten years, for instance, over 200.CC0 natives have ,per•ished owiiiig to the distribution of a parasite, Ti-ypancsoma.gairJbieuse., which causes the disea.se known as "sleeping sickness," and which is carried ,by a fiy of the "Tsetse" description, Gjomina ,palpal:s. "Nfgana," a. fatal .disea.se amongst cattle and horses in Africa, is caused by another allied parasite-, T. brucei, and "surra," an Oriental cattle disease, by T. e-vansi. In each of these oases the direct agent of infection is .a species of fiy. 'Die spiiroc.ba.ete of the European human, recurrent fever, and that of the cattle disease known as "tick fever," are transmitted respectively by fleas-, or bugs, and by ticks {which are no't- really insects, but degraded relatives of the spider. The malaria, of tropical Australia. and of New Guinea and the Oceanic Islands is caused by another animal parasite carried by the mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. And' what diseases enter our food through the medium of the oojnv mon house-fly and the- bluebottle (Galli-phoi-a) a vast literature will' tell us. Besides an instructive chapter on thisse death-dealing ' Bipterae and Ixodidae, Mr. Duncan's bock deals in am instructive and non-technical manner with the elements of entomology, and some o-l the strange life-histories and instincts of insects and spiders.