LIFE HISTORY 13 



the Club House has been notably small, considering the 

 fact that the Club maintains a dining-room and its win- 

 dows and doors are not screened. A year ago last fall 

 there was a sudden incursion of flies, so that they created 

 much annoyance in all parts of the Club House ; and they 

 were specially abundant in my room. I protected my 

 windows by screens, and then captured the flies on sticky 

 fly paper, securing in that way more than 2,000. The 

 nuisance in other rooms continued several weeks longer, 

 and then gradually abated. There was no recurrence at 

 the corresponding season last fall. 



''Recalling some statements of yours with reference to 

 the life history of the house fly, I noted that the epidemic 

 was coincident with the grading of the University ath- 

 letic field, about 200 yards from the Faculty Club, and 

 that in that grading many horses were employed, probably 

 as many as fifty. So far as I am aware there are no 

 horses stabled on the University campus, and I do not 

 recall having seen any horse stables at a less distance than 

 two blocks, or, say, three times the distance of the athletic 

 field. These various relations of time and space serve to 

 connect the local fly epidemic in a fairly definite way with 

 the temporary proximity of a large number of horses. 

 ''Yours very truly, 



"G. K. Gilbert." 



In an article entitled "Experiments on Transmission 

 of Bacteria by Flies with Especial Relation to an Epi- 

 demic of Bacillary Dysentery at the Worcester State 

 Hospital," Dr. Samuel T. Orton (1910), after describ- 

 ing a series of very interesting experiments indicating 

 the spread of a species of bacillus throughout the in- 

 stitution by the agency of flies, describes a search made 

 to discover the breeding places of the unusual number 

 of flies infesting the hospital. Searching first for horse 



