hodge] FLIES AS A NATURE-STUDY PROBLEM 93 



sour, except where flies have free access to it, as in dairies and where 

 pigs or poultry are fed with it, decaying bananas or banana skins, 

 stale eggs, brown sugar, or molasses, mixed with diluted vinegar, 

 a stale crab, or crab shells, will attract flies away from almost 

 everything else. Flies are most strongly attracted to anything 

 that is fermenting actively, and the best bait may be made by 

 mixing a thin bran mash (one pint potato water, one-quarter pint 

 molasses, one-quarter pint milk, one-half pint bran) with plenty 

 of active yeast. Stale beer attracts flies by its odor of fermenta- 

 tion. 



This is important. Keep your fly trap a good distance from the 

 house, in the barnyard, back by the alley fence, near the poultry 

 yard, all the while attracting the flies away from, rather than 

 toward the house. By this plan, too, we can use more effective 

 baits without offence, and pick up the flies before they come near 



the house at all. 



Getthelastone Fly Nets. With the out-door traps to catch almost all, 

 what do we have with which to insure picking up the last fly that finds 

 its way into the house? The swatter comes the nearest to doing this, but 

 this is very laborious and slow and filthy. If we swat a fly, we must pick it 

 up and put it in the grate, or we are likely to eat it and breathe it as dust a 

 little later. Small butterfly nets with handles long enough to reach ceilings 

 without stretching, and floors without stooping, with which we can sweep up 

 the swarm hovering under the chandeliers, are cleanly and strictly getthe- 

 lastone weapons. With one of these nets not a fly can escape. With a few 

 quick sweeps we pick them all up and then tap the net lightly overthe porch 

 rail (we do not need to strike hard enough to smash the flies and soil the net) 

 and turning it inside out, we wipe the flies into the edge of the flower bed with 

 the foot — all caught and out of the house in one operation. Using the nets 

 is good sport for children, and furnishes the means of a lively game. Give 

 each child a net and let them all start at a signal — about the schoolrooms or 

 yard, dooryard or barnyard — and in five or ten minutes give the recall signal, 

 and the one, or the side, that has the most flies wins the game. 



These nets are made at a cost for materials of less than two cents apiece, 

 the materials being fine mesh, plain white mosquito net, a piece of spring steel 

 wire (bale wire does very well) and a switch from the willows, shrubbery or 

 orchard prunings. Do not try to make the nets out of cheese cloth, tarlatan, 

 bobinet (too expensive and lasts no longer) or the common coarse-mesh 

 mosquito bar. Order in season and have your merchants get plenty of the 

 fine-mesh netting, 72 inches wide, or the widest obtainable, and cut six nets 

 to the yard, being careful to make them long way of the net the long way of 

 the piece i.e., the double threaded warp must run the long way of the net. 

 Each net will then be about eight inches in diameter and 18 inches deep. 

 For use in dairies larger nets are better, to sweep up the clouds of stable 

 and horn flies about the cows. Cutting four nets from a yard and a half 

 yields about the right size, and we need of course, heavier spring wire for the 

 frame. This size is also good for general insect collecting. In sewing up, 

 first run a narrow hem along the top, to hold the wire, and beginning two 

 inches down from this hem French seam the open side and bottom. Bend 

 the wire into an eight inch circle, and, putting something smooth over the end, 

 run into the hem, bend out the ends, cutting one off one inch and the other one 

 and one-half inches from the net, bend a sharp right angle and cut off to a tack 



