114 



CIVIC BIOLOQY 



wet, fermenting matter, auimal or A^egetable. The maggots are 

 hard to kill ; they will live for an hour or more in pure kero- 

 sene oil and for over half an hour in alcohol. Tobacco kills 

 many insects, but house flies have been bred from the snuff 

 on a druQ^o-ist's counter. This means that as lonof as there are 

 flies about, they will find something in which to breed, and 



that, with stables and barn- 

 yards, gutters, roadsides, 

 and acres of pastures, with 

 accidental accumulations, 

 lawn clippings, compost 

 and rotting weeds and fer- 

 menting garbage, preven- 

 tion of breeding by doing 

 away with breeding places 

 and materials is beyond 

 human possibility. It is 

 easy in comparison to exter- 

 minate the breeders them- 

 selves. 



Still, proper disposal of all 

 this waste matter comes to be 

 a problem of greatly increased 

 importance when we attempt to 

 prevent flies from breeding in 

 it. If material becomes infested 

 with eggs or maggots, the best 

 treatment of it is probably to turn it out in the hot sunshine and 

 dry it as completely as possible. If this cannot be done, the maggots 

 may be killed by saturating the material with a solution of iron sul- 

 phate (copperas), two pounds to the gallon of water. Treatment of 

 stables with chloride of lime has been recommended, but this is expen- 

 sive and disagreeable, and the fumes (chlorin) are likely to injure the 

 animals. Stiles has buried infested material six feet deep and found 

 that the flies work their way out. For the farm home the cost of han- 

 dling is doubled and fertilizer value reduced from 55 to 69 j^er cent by 



Fig. 57. Member of Junior Sanitary 

 Police of Cleveland 



Photograph by Df . Jean Dawson 



