498 PROCEEDINGS OP SECTION H. 



In the continuous rains of summer, when every shallow is converted 

 into a pool, it is not possible on a wide stretch of land to prevent 

 the breeding of mosquitos, and numerous gutters are required to 

 keep the surface dry ; but mosquitos take two or three weeks to 

 develop into flying insects. It is curious to see in the evaporating 

 shallows the mosquito larva lying folded up like turnip seeds in 

 the depressions and cattle footprints the last to dry up. In 

 country sanitation it is necessary, among other things, to pay 

 attention to milk — to construct a dairy on strictly sanitary prin- 

 ciples is not an easy matter. The Cbinese neither keep cows nor 

 use milk for their childi'en, yet are the most numerous race on the 

 face of the globe. If they Jiave to feed a motherless child they 

 use rice, gruel, and sugar, a mixture I have often found more 

 satisfactory in practice than the substitutes for milk food brought 

 out from Europe. How then shall we manage the milk diificulty 

 proved so fruitful in carrying disease from house to house ? Let 

 us not lose sight of the fact that it is the usage to let milk stand 

 in shallow open pans — no form of vessel is so well constructed to 

 collect the germ-bearing dust that falls everywhere, or to absorb 

 emanations from the sick man's bed or poisonous gases. In nature 

 milk is never so exposed ; until this dangerous custom is rectified, 

 the consumer should protect himself to the extent he can, by 

 boiling the milk. But milk is not the only moist material ab- 

 sorbing putref cent and possibly pathogenic organisms, our slaughter 

 yards and butcher's shops are defective in sanitary contrivances, 

 and to the student of pathology it is indeed wonderful that animal 

 food distributed by such methods, does not convey disease far and 

 wide among the people. Cooking again helps us, by which the 

 superficial parts which absorb most of the ofiensive matters are 

 modified by the heat applied. The European house-fly, now 

 established in all Australian settlement.s, is a most troublesome 

 insect, it is bred in the refuse heap, one moment it settles on de- 

 composing substances alive with vibrios and bacteria, the next on 

 our food, and it is notorious that places wliere house-flies abound 

 are those where fever cases frequently occur. A few weeks ago, 

 visiting the famous silver-mining country at Broken Hill, where a 

 typhoid epidemic was raging, flies were noticed in great numbers 

 in the houses, places in the rooms were black with them, and it 

 was difficult to keep them out of food. Much of the comfort of 

 a house, to say nothing of its sanitary state, is interfered with by 

 the presence of the house-fly ; it breeds most extensively in stable 

 dung, and its little hard pupa cases may be picked out of the dried 

 parts of the pavement adjoining the walls. It is the custom of 

 sanitary authorities to think little of the accumulations of stable 

 dung on town premises, and by-laws allow it being stored for long 

 periods. If your house is alongside of stables, visitations of flies 

 will be found very troublesome, and it is here the domestic fowl 

 comes to the rescue; nothing so choice a morsel to the chicken as the 



