42 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Unloading a Car of Stable Manure from New York. Four ounces of material from 

 the top of this carload contained between 700 and 800 maggots, by actual count. 



warm weather only ten clays are required to develop a generation. 

 Each female may lay 120 eggs, and her possible progeny amounts to 

 more than 3,000,000,000 in a single season. Hence the tremendous 

 increase in the number of flies the latter part of the summer. Then 

 please visit some of our cheap restaurants and meat markets, and note 

 how they are swarming with flies which crawl all over the unprotected 

 food and provisions. If you must eat food from such a place, choose 

 something that can be cooked thoroughly before eating, or if raw, 

 something that has a natural covering to be removed before eating, like 

 an orange or banana. Eemember that typhoid fever does not always 

 come through the water or milk supply or by eating oysters. 



Of course flies do not originate typhoid fever, but if a case occurs 

 in a locality where conditions are unsanitary they are sure to spread it. 



The stable manure which is shipped in carloads from the cities to 

 suburban or country districts is an excellent breeding place for flies. 

 Two years ago one of my assistants examined such a loaded car stand- 

 ing upon the siding near this city (New Haven). The contents had 

 come from New York and was waiting to be unloaded for use upon the 

 land for growing fruit or vegetable crops. The upper two inches of the 

 manure was literally swarming with maggots. Some of the material 

 was taken to the laboratory, and four ounces of it contained between 

 700 and 800 maggots, by actual count ! 



What of ordinances and health board regulations? It is true that 

 anti-spitting rules are in force, as are also regulations about the cover- 

 ing of foodstuffs when carted through the streets or exhibited for sale, 

 and garbage cans and wagons must be covered. Is it unreasonable to 



