192 THOMAS SAY FOUNDATION 



sor Haseman's request furnished additional informa- 

 tion, from which the following is extracted: 



"The larvae of flies I sent you were collected by 

 the mother from a chamber; I personally do not know 

 that they were passed by the patient. There are four 

 in the family. The father, aged about 30, has never no- 

 ticed any larvae. The mother, aged about 26, has 

 passed larvae in 1912-13-14-15, none yet this year; has 

 had from one to three attacks each year, in the months 

 of July, August, and September. A girl, aged 7^, tirst 

 passed larvae in Jul}- this year, — flies sent you. Boy 

 aged 5, no larvae this year, one attack last year. * * * 

 The attacks are short, one or two days; some elevation 

 of temperature (101 to 102 degrees), colicky pains in 

 abdomen, anorexia, sometimes nausea and vomiting. 

 Calomel with salts or oil will bring the larvae, after 

 which the patient recovers." 



Dr. L. O. Howard, Chief of the Bureau of Ento- 

 mology, states in reply to an inquiry that many cases 

 of Sarcophaga larvae passed in stools have been re- 

 ferred to the Bureau; as far as I know these are the 

 first in which the species has been determined. Pre- 

 cisely similar cases are noted by Dr. Ernest Warren 

 in Annals Natal Museum, i, 215, 1906-08, as occur- 

 ring in Natal; since haemorrhoidalis occurs through- 

 out Africa, as well as in Europe and Asia, it is not 

 improbable that he was dealing with this species, al- 

 though his single reared adult was a female, and was 

 identified at the British Museum by Mr. Austen only 

 as Sarcophaga sp. Mr. Austen's partial description 

 of the specimen agrees with this species. In Europe 

 also, according to Mr. Austen, similar cases have been 

 recorded without specific identification. 



These cases raise the suspicion that intestinal 

 myiasis in man may be often or generally caused 

 by this insect. The habit involves, not only the de- 

 posit of larvae on human food, which probably occurs 

 at times in several scavenger species of Sarcophaga, 

 but also the ability of the larva to develop almost or 

 quite to full size within the alimentary canal of man, 

 which has not as yet been proved in any other species. 



Prof. C. L. Metcalf has recently published in 

 Bull. 253, Maine Experiment Station, some interest- 



