Sanitary Officer and Disease-disseminator. 



293 



Many of these creatures are a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde combination of two 

 personalities, marking two successive phases of existence. The question is, which 

 is the greater — the harm they do or the good? The answer for the individual 

 may be, the harm, whilst for the race it is probably the good. Anvway, the rational 

 course is to clear away the cause and the effects must cease. It is puerile to be 

 catching single files in the house whilst we are encouraging millions to breed at the 

 back door. The stable is rapidly becoming an institution of the past. Let the 

 suburban gardener anticipate the early date when it will have ceased to be, by 

 feeding his garden with chemical manures. 



But one of our domestic flies, the small house-fly ^ — a paler as well as smaller 

 Insect than the other — feeds in its larval stage on decaying vegetable refuse, so 

 the garden rubbish should be burnt, not stacked. This flv has more rounded tips 

 to its wings, and on account of 

 its inferior size is often referred 

 to as a young house-fly. Size 

 in the case of Insects that have 

 reached the winged stage, it 

 is perhaps unnecessarv to point 

 out, is no criterion of age. 

 This stage reached, growth 

 ceases. 



The food of the blow-flv 

 or blue-bottle- in its grub- 

 stage is very different. It is 

 a flesh-feeder, and its proper 

 mission in life is to clear awav 

 those animals that have met 

 w^ith death from old-age, dis- 

 ease, or in an encounter with 

 an opponent that is not car- 

 nivorous. That mission is 

 undoubtedly an important and 

 beneficial one for the human 

 race ; but when that race takes 

 to storing meat, poultry, and fish in its larders, and the keen senses of the blow-fl\- 

 track it to its hiding-place, some fault is found with Nature's arrangements. What 

 seems to be recjuired of Nature to meet the altered conditions brought about by 

 civilization is the e\-olution of a race of blow-flies that can distinguish between 

 what is common and what is property. The vegetarian's comment upon this 

 suggestion would be, in all probabiht\-, that it would be more reasonable to give up 

 converting our lardeis into charnel-houses I 



The truth is that what we dub domestic pests are part of the price we must 

 pay for our domesticity. All the kill-that-fly leagues can do will make no 

 appreciable difference to the fl\" nuisance ; and probabh" if we wqw to pull down 

 our houses and return to the pastoral life of our nomad ancestors we should find 



1 Homalomyui canicularis. - Calliphora vomitoria. 



Vlwto by\ 



,/., l-.L.S. 



Blow-Fly ok BLfE-lioTTLE. 



HcR- shown four tiiiits the actual size. The grub of the b!ow-(ly eats flesh, and 

 wheu the mother-fly appears indoors she is always seeking for the larder, in order 



lliat she may lay her eggs on our joints of meat. 



