A Dangerous Neighbor 215 



said in extenuation of the faults of any 

 criminal, even in the world of insects. If 

 flies could talk, and would, they might well 

 respond to the indictment by calling the 

 attention of Homo sapiens to the fact that it is 

 his unsanitary manure heaps and garbage piles, 

 which afford the defendant its breeding places. 

 That the chief offence is in dispersing danger- 

 ous stuff which man, in defiance of sanitation 

 and decency, spreads abroad. That screening 

 the houses will largely keep the accused out 

 anyway. The defence might well be summar- 

 ized "No careless man, no typhoid fly." At 

 any rate if we bear this suggestion in mind, act 

 upon it, and then kill all the household flies 

 we can, the typhoid fever statistics will surely 

 score a noteworthy measure of improvement. 

 There are many other insects which play 

 man false in conveying to him various kinds 

 of infectious plants and animals of the micro- 

 scopic world. Among these the mosquito 

 and ticks are the most important. But we 

 have already said enough about these, and so 

 need not further prolong this short indulgence 

 in entomological muckraking. 



