The House Fly— Disease Carrier 



ZOOLOGICAL POSITION, LIFE HISTORY, AND 

 HABITS 



Zoological Position 



ZOOLOGICALLY speaking, this insect belongs to 

 the order Diptera, or two-winged flies. In this 

 order it is the type of a superfamily known as the Mus- 

 coidea, of a family known as the Muscidse and of the 

 genus Musca, the specific name given to it originally 

 by Linnaeus being domestica; and among zoologists it 

 is referred to as Musca domestica L. 



The superfamily Muscoidea, to which it belongs and 

 of which it is the type, is a very large group contain- 

 ing a number of families and many species which so 

 closely resemble the house fly that to the untrained eye 

 they cannot be distinguished. Dr. David Sharp, in 

 the Cambridge Natural History, writing of the house 

 fly, states that ''it sometimes occurs in large numbers 

 away from the dwellings of man," and the writer is 

 often asked to explain why parties camping in the 

 Northwest, on the prairies for example, many miles 

 away from human habitations, almost immediately 

 find their camps infested with the house fly. The an- 

 swer to such questions, and possibly the answer to the 



