32 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 



fight flies or other pests they fall off in milk, and every farmer 

 that ever sold a hide knows that bot holes lessen its value. 



Even man does not escape attack, and has parasites as specific- 

 ally dependent upon him as has any other animal. But it is not 

 only the direct attack that is annoying, unpleasant or dangerous. 

 Some of the most common of our pests act as carriers or inter- 

 mediate hosts for serious diseases. It is bad enough to be bitten 

 by a mosquito, but if that mosquito inoculates its victim with the 

 germs of malaria, yellow fever or other pernicious trouble, the 

 matter becomes much more serious. To be bitten by a flea is no 

 great matter in itself, but if the flea came from a plague-infested 

 rat, it is quite another matter. 



It has been definitely demonstrated that a considerable number 

 of febrile diseases depend for their transmission altogether upon 

 certain kinds of insects, and that if these insects were eliminated, 

 the diseases would disappear. 



Ordinary house flies are about the most abundant of all our 

 usual pests, and besides the annoyance they cause they are capa- 

 ble of carrying and often do carry the organisms that cause 

 typhoid fever, and other enteric diseases, consumption, diph- 

 theria and several other equally dangerous ailments. We must 

 not, therefore consider these small creatures as insignificant or 

 unworthy of study and attention. They are more dangerous and 

 less easily controlled than the large predatory animals of the field 

 and jungle. A campaign against flies and mosquitoes looks un- 

 worthy of a comparatively huge animal like man; but the com- 

 bat is not so unequal and the victims of insect-borne diseases run 

 into the thousands each month. Large areas of Africa have been 

 depopulated by the sleeping sickness, borne by a Tsetse fly, and a 

 similar fly makes the keeping of horses an impossibility in other 

 portions of the same continent. 



The fight against insects is not confined to the farmer and 

 fruit grower, nor is he the only one that suffers from their depre- 

 dations. The community at large is as much on the defensive; 

 but it is only recently that this fact has been appreciated by our 

 sanitary and medical authorities. As the agriculturist has learned 

 to control those insects that oppress him and to lessen to the 

 vanishing point their tax upon him, so it is quite possible to ma- 

 terially lessen if not to altogether eliminate the fly, mosquito and 

 other pests that prey upon humanity at large. 



