PREVENTIVE MEASURES 213 
before she lays her eggs, and it is during this period 
that Hodge proposes to catch her. 
It is interesting to know the way in which the idea 
came to his mind. In a paper entitled “Extermination 
of the Typhoid or Filth Fly, a Plan of Campaign,” read 
before the annual meeting of the American Civic Asso¬ 
ciation in Washington in December, 1910, he shows 
that for eight years previously he had amused himself 
in the summer by rearing native birds, especially the 
ruffed grouse and the bob-white. The enormous quan¬ 
tity of insect food required by the young chicks led him 
to what seemed to him the most effective plan of deal¬ 
ing with the fly problem. He needed flies with which 
to feed his chicks, and the problem was to get flies in 
the greatest numbers possible. 
Having perfected what seemed to him an excellent 
method of accomplishing this, he began to argue as 
to the use of his idea as a substitute for the treatment 
or removal of the manure pile or the treatment or re¬ 
moval of all substances in which flies will breed. Think¬ 
ing of the enormous multiplication of the offspring of 
a single pair in the springtime, he asks the pertinent 
question, “Why not catch the original pair of flies in 
April?” After studying the problem for some time, 
he became so enthusiastic over the prospect that in his 
address he uses the following sentence: “If, beginning 
next spring, every family will adopt effective meas¬ 
ures to kill the few hundred flies that succeed in sur¬ 
viving the winter, I am convinced that we could rele¬ 
gate our window screens to the scrap heap, so far 
