PLAGUE OF FLIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9954, 16 September 1910, Page 2

PLAGUE OF FLIES.

EATING UP A VILLAGE. Tho inhabitants of the pretty, rosodeckod, riverside village of Postwick, four miles from Norwich and two miles from the nearest railway station, are suffering from an abominable plague or flies, wrote a correspondent recently. Houses have to bo kept shut, and evening walks are dreaded ordeals for tho inhabitants.

Postwick —pronounced '"' Pozzick. —is the property of .Lord Rosebery, who has no residence iu the neighbourhood, but a special emissary is about to leave for Berkeley Square and tho Thirdans at Epsom to appeal for Lord Roschery's advice and protection. " Of course, we have what you might call a lot of flies every summer," said the villago postmistress when a correspondent called on her. "But for the last month they have been unbearable, and they get worse and worse." She showed two modernised types of fly paper—long strips of linen like tape measures—coated with sticky liquid and covered with flics.

" My daughter-in-law camo in quite faint the other night," she said, "and the flies bite me till 1 don't know what to do with myself. My s&n's baby can't sleep for them, and the poor little thing is getting quite ill. We put muslin over her cot to keep the flies off. but they buzz to get in and succeed in biting her in spite of all wo can do. As for the milk and cream, thev drown themselves in it by the dozen.' 5 " The flies are directly due to the Norwich corporation's giant rubbish heap," said the medical officer. " For fiome months past tho corporation has been sending the contents of dust carts down the Yare on lighters to some land they own on the shore opposite Postwick. Tt is not sewage, of course, but just refuse of various kinds—everything found in the town's dust bins. " The rubbish tip, across the stream, is not in my district, but the doplorablo state of Postwick is much my affair. Many villagers had not connected the flies with the smells of the rubbish heap till this week, but it is obvious to me as a medical man that tho dust from dwellings contains myriads of eggs of house flies, which hatch out in that hotbed. Tho larvte feed u rotting vegetable matter, which, by the way, causes vile smells, and when they become fully developed flies they roam about, and' Postwick is tho first village they encounter. I have received an offer from a London firm to exterminate the flies and' to send me the necessary materials free of charge. Tliis offer I have passed on.to Councillor Ewing, who lives at Postwick, and he has to-day received a keg containing fifty-six pounds of fly-killer for the dust heap and six dozen tins of it for the villagers to use in their homes. The buzzing of millions of flies is bad for the nerves of villagers, but the danger of their infecting food is infinitely more serious."

Return ig to .Postwick, the correspondent found the children all busy slaying flies in the cottages and lanes. The village blacksmith showed his fly cage, a sort of meat safe of narrow meshed zinc, with a bewildering entrance underneath. It was so full of flies that their restless buzzing made it roar.' A neighbour drowned the occupants of her similar fly cage. "I drown them that way, just like mice," she said. " Fly-papers cost too much. The flies pile themselves up in the corners of cupboards, and I have- to sweep them out with a feather in the evenings when thev are drowsy. All the babies in Postwick have been bitten, and in church the drumming in your ears makes your head ache." Postwick and the neighbouring villages are now so full of the idea that the swarm and the smells are associated that a dread of what one aged rustic called " jarms " has become universal.