xviii THE HOUSE FLY—DISEASE CARRIER 
proaches it for suggestiveness and availability is the 
name “filth fly/' proposed by Dr. C. W. Stiles, of the 
U. S. Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service. 
But “filth fly,” while a nauseating name associated as 
it must be with the dinner tables of unscreened houses, 
carries simply the noisome idea and not the dangerous 
idea, and the latter is one that will induce people to 
fight. 
It will not be an easy fight. The species is firmly 
intrenched; it multiplies with startling rapidity, and 
its breeding places are everywhere. Improved sanitary 
methods in cities and the gradual disappearance in 
cities of horse stables, due to the rapid increase in the 
number of motor vehicles, are bringing about a de¬ 
cided lessening of the myriads of flies in the cities. 
In small towns, however, and in the country and at 
army posts, and especially in concentration camps, and 
wherever large bodies of men are brought together 
for temporary purposes in construction work, there is 
great need of intimate practical knowledge of the ty¬ 
phoid fly and of the measures to be taken against it. 
The residents of cities must also have this knowledge, 
but they need it less than the others. 
Acknowledgments of assistance from others will 
be made in the text from time to time. The writer 
wishes especially, however, to thank Prof. S. A. Forbes, 
Dr. C. W. Stiles, and Dr. B. H. Ransom for allowing 
him to use their very valuable but as yet unpublished 
notes on several aspects of the fly question. He wishes 
also to thank Mr. R. B. Watrous, Secretary of the 
