GRASSHOPPERS AND OTHER INJURIOUS INSECTS OF 1911 AND 1912. 



63 



to use approved fly traps, and one was figured and described which 

 at that time was attracting much attention and proving very effi- 

 cient. This was the Hodge Fly Trap, and it is Prof. Hodge's son 

 who is credited with a remark which was perhaps responsible for 

 this new method of handling the fly problem. In other words, it 

 occurred to the young man that it would be much better instead of 

 making ourselves prisoners, as it were, with screens, to trap the fly, 

 or as the boy expressed it, "Why not put the flies in jail and let our- 

 selves out." 



In the spring of 1912, 

 in co-operation with the 

 State Board of Health, 

 we prepared and printed 

 13,000 copies of a large 

 illustrated poster show- 

 ing the evils resulting 

 from tolerating the 

 house fly and how com- 

 munities and individuals 

 might successfully guard 

 against disease from this 

 source. These were dis- 

 tributed both by the 

 Board of Health and 

 from this office to schools, health offices, commercial clubs, hospi- 

 tals, women's clubs and other organizations throughout the state, 

 finding such appreciation that toward the end of summer the post- 

 ers could be seen placarded in many public places in towns and 

 cities all over Minnesota. Some communities started systematic 

 campaigns against flies, resulting in more or less freedom from the 

 pest, depending upon the thoroughness with which they were con- 

 ducted. Results would undoubtedly be more satisfactory if laws 

 were created tending to make the eradication of such insects com- 

 pulsory. 



In the summer of 1912 the director of the Minnesota Experi- 

 ment Station felt the need of a fly trap which would capture flies in 

 wholesale quantities without the necessity of the traps being fre- 

 quently emptied. The Engineering Division of the Agricultural 

 College was asked to construct such a trap on the principle of the 

 Hodge Fly Trap, which in turn is an improved modification of the 

 old fashioned traditional fly catcher of the cheap boarding house 

 and the country grocery. The result was a trap twenty-four inches 



Fig. 42. House Fly on kuiip of sugar. Brues. 



