1910] The Ottawa Naturalist 75 



ubiquitous house-fly. The mosquito would have a good case in 

 court if it were tried by an impartial jury as it could put in a 

 plea of accidental or unintentional homicide. In its search for 

 food it uses its beak hypodermatically and introdues into its 

 biped victim the Plasmodium m-alariae and that disease that has 

 such a misnomer is set up. The house-fly is hardly responsible 

 for its hairy feet and nature did not restrict it as to the places 

 where it should walk, as it does equally well on the glass of the 

 baby's bottle or on the soldier's biscuit. It could also set up a 

 plea of innocence and show that all its crimes are due to ignorance. 

 Man must, however, look at the matter from the standpoint of 

 self-preservation and put up a "no trespass" sign and if the 

 warning is not heeded the careless dung-bred dipteron must suffer 

 the consequences. When a young man goes to war he is full of 

 the martial spirit and he is willing to be a victim of the bullets 

 of the enemy for the glory and rightousness of his country ; but 

 he is much more likel}^ to be put under the sod by the Plas- 

 modium malariae or the Bacillus typhosus, and there is no doubt 

 but that a knowledge of bacteriology and entomology are of 

 more importance in war times than the question of armament. 

 During the British-Boer war there were said to be at least a 

 hundred thousand men invalided and a Canadian surgeon 

 testified that in many camps the meat hung up could not be 

 seen for house-flies. Think of this many men, all a loss as fight- 

 ing units, and the great expense to the government for medical 

 attendants, nurses, food and medicines. The United States 

 thought it had a war with Spain and that the States won the 

 victory, but it would be more accurate to state that the United 

 States had a war with the hoUse-fly and suffered awful defeat 

 at the hands (feet) of its little enemy, as the Spaniards only 

 killed about two hundred Americans and the house-fly by its 

 utter carelessness in walking in the latrines and then flying into 

 the mess tents and stealing its meals from the soldiers, made it 

 possible for the Bacillus typhosus to make many very ill and kill 

 over four thousand of them. Thus the fly was victorious over a 

 great nation. Fifty thousand men are buried in the neighbor- 

 hood of the Panama Canal and the little mosquito beat the 

 French to a finish in their efforts to build a great transcontinental 

 water-way. There are about fifty thousand men there now in 

 an ffort to accomplish the same object and they will probably 

 be successful as they know the enemy and her power and also 

 know how to prevent her careless wavs of getting a meal of 

 blood. Some heedless people may not know the importance of 

 this subject and they are slow" to learn, and it may be necessary 

 to remind them that war is hell and that in the Crimean War 



