52 THE HOUSE FLY—DISEASE CARRIER 
tically made him the first successful investigator in this 
direction, since the Wright brothers acknowledge that 
they owe very much to Langley’s scientific papers on 
this subject. From his interest in this direction, Pro¬ 
fessor Langley devoted certain grants from the so- 
called Hodgkins fund* to the study of the mechanism 
of flight of various birds and insects. Some of the 
results of these studies have already been published in 
the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. During the 
past ten years a series of these investigations have been 
carried on under Prof. Robert von Lendenfeld of the 
University of Prague, and from a report received from 
Professor von Lendenfeld by the present Secretary of 
the Smithsonian Institution, Doctor Walcott, which the 
writer has been permitted to see. it appears that, after 
a study of the organs of flight in the Lepidoptera, 
Hymenoptera, and Diptera by Messrs. Hauptmann, 
Groschl, Ritter, and Professor von Lendenfeld, the 
latter became convinced that of all the forms of insects, 
and indeed of all flying animals, the Diptera would 
furnish the best models for flying machines. He thinks 
that a model built according to this pattern should be 
made and experimented with. Certain studies by Mr. 
Ritter on the blow fly, which are at the time of this 
writing in the hands of the Smithsonian Institution 
for publication, indicate that this insect and its flight 
would form the best basis for a model. 
This is an interesting and important statement, since 
*A bequest to the Smithsonian Institution for the investigation 
of the properties of the upper air. 
