CHAPTER V 



HOW TO REDUCE FLIES 



THE easiest and best way to reduce the total numbers 

 of flies in any given community is to kill the fly-larvae 

 when they are feeding in the manure-heap ; and the 

 easiest way to kill the larvae is to destroy the manure- 

 heap and all it contains. But it is not sufficient to 

 destroy the manure once and then to allow fresh 

 manure to collect again to harbour flies once more. 

 The manure must be destroyed regularly once every 

 week during the fly-breeding season. The fly meta- 

 morphosis requires at least ten days in summer weather, 

 as stated before. Therefore it is sufficient to deal with 

 the manure once every week in warm weather and less 

 frequently during the colder months, for then the 

 metamorphosis is delayed. 



But flies can fly some considerable distance. There- 

 fore it is necessary to destroy all fly-breeding places 

 once every week. Every fly-breeding place within 

 range of human habitations should be dealt with 

 weekly and regularly. 



At first sight this would seem to be a difficult and 

 expensive operation, but, as a matter of fact, it is 

 neither difficult nor expensive. Anti-mosquito cam- 

 paigns carried out in this way have been undertaken 

 in many parts of the world, and have been most 

 successful, and their small cost fully justified by results 



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