ANNUAL SCOURGE OF FLIES AND MOSQUITOES 183 
in the opinion of expert European authority, President Jesup’s inception 
of the American Museum Wood Collection with its complete representation 
of distribution maps and the recent work which has added flower and fruit 
models and arranged the trees in natural groups, have produced an exhi- 
bition unsurpassed in excellence. 
THE ANNUAL SCOURGE OF FLIES AND MOSQUITOES 
Exhibition Hall labels must necessarily be brief. For those who are especially 
interested in some given subject, much must be left for explanation by other means. 
These notes on household insects have been prepared te supplement the exhibits 
which are being arranged in the Hall of Local Insects, since inquiries pertinent to 
the subject come both from members of the Museum and others almost daily by 
letter, telephone and word of mouth. 
HE old method of prolonging life through the quest for an elixir of 
life has fortunately been replaced by the modern method of gaining 
control of the preventable causes of premature death. Of these 
causes to-day nothing is to be compared in disastrous results with the infec- 
tious or germ disease. One of the greatest discoveries made in the work 
of getting control of germ diseases has been the relation between their 
dissemination and common insects, insects so accepted by the world as 
necessary evils that there has been great difficulty for public opinion to 
grasp the far-reaching force of the discoveries and the tragic meaning of 
past years of ignorance. That where there are no mosquitoes, there will 
be no malaria and no yellow fever, is a fact now proved beyond dispute. 
That Africa has so often been the “white man’s grave” has not been the 
fault of Africa so much as of the white man’s lack of knowledge of the re- 
lations between the sleeping sickness and other fevers prevalent there and 
insects, especially of flies and mosquitoes. 
The Typhoid-Fly, as the United States Entomologist has suggested that 
the common house-fly, Musca domestica, be called, is the most abundant 
insect of this vicinity. It carries the germs of typhoid and many other 
diseases, especially of those intestinal in character, on the sticky pads of 
its feet, on its proboscis and in its digestive apparatus. Its eggs are laid 
in foul matter where the larvee feed and change to pup. Upon emerging 
from the pupal cases, the flies wing themselves perhaps to other foul places, 
perhaps to the nearest kitchen or dining-room, to sick-chambers, to the 
children in the streets, always returning to accumulations of foul matter for 
the purpose of depositing eggs. It is unnecessary to say more. These 
facts prove the need of an active campaign, increasing in force with the 
