460 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 6 



poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) ^ and it is also quite probably a 

 regular or accidental carrier of other human and animal diseases with 

 which its connection has not yet been elucidated. 



On account of its importance as an economic insect, it has seemed 

 worth while to publish the following resume of the distribution of 

 Stomoxys calcitrans in different parts of the world. The material 

 here presented has been gathered from many sources; much has been 

 collected from published writings, but a great part has been supplied 

 by entomologists in various parts of the world to whom requests for 

 information were sent. As is evident from the context, the writer is 

 greatly indebted to these gentlemen who have so freely given data 

 from their personal experience. 



Next to the common house fly, latterly termed the typhoid fly, 

 this species is one of the most widely diffused species of insects, and 

 has been found in some part of nearly every habitable region of the 

 globe. Like the house fly, it is probably a native of the Old World, 

 most likely of central Europe, and if not actually native to North 

 America, it was evidently brought hither on ships at an early date. 



The species was named Conops calcitrans by Linnaeus in the tenth 

 edition, of his Systema Naturae (p. 604; 2) and soon afterwards Geoff- 

 roy ^ erected the genus Sto77ioxys to include this species which was 

 the only one then known. I have not been able to approximate the 

 date of its introduction into America, but its abundance in Philadel- 

 phia as early as 1776 is attested by the following excerpt from an 

 account written by Thomas Jefferson.' In describing the reasons for 

 the hasty adoption of the American Declaration of Independence by 

 the Continental Congress on July 4th, 1776, Jefferson writes: 



"The weather was oppressively warm, and the room occupied by 

 the deputies was hard by a stable, whence the hungry flies swarmed 

 thick and fierce, alighting on their legs and biting hard through their 

 thin silk stockings. Treason was preferable to discomfort." 



No entomologist, after reading this paragraph, can question the 

 fact that the "hungry flies" were anything but Stomoxys calcitrans, 

 so characteristic is Jefferson's account. 



That it was present in the United States in the early colonial days 

 is thus certain. One should expect as much, however, for it is adapted 



1 Brues, C. T. The Relation of the Stable Fly {Stomoxys calcitrans) to the 

 Transmission of Infantile Paralysis. Journ. Econ. Entom., Vol. 6, pp. 101-109 

 (April, 1913). 



2 Histoire Abregee des Insectes, II, 538 (1762, 1764, 1799). 



3 For this interesting information I am indebted to an article by Hubert Bruce 

 Fuller, entitled "Myths of American History," which appeared in Munsey's Mag- 

 azine for May, 1913. 



