LIFE HISTORY 9 



numerous. Stiles has seen great accumulations of pig 

 manure fairly swarming with fly larvse. 



With regard to ordinary kitchen refuse, such as is 

 found in the garbage pail, it is the opinion of Prof. 

 J. S. Hine, of the Ohio State University, who has paid 

 much attention to the subject, that, while house flies 

 visit garbage in numbers, they appear in most cases 

 to be after food only, as only a few specimens of this 

 species were reared from such material during the sea- 

 son when he was at work. 



With fermenting vegetable refuse from the kitchen, 

 he found that the very common fly which bred in it 

 was not the typhoid fly, but Muscina stabulans, the so- 

 called stable fly. Hundreds of these flies were reared 

 and their larvae were exceedingly abundant in all of 

 the samples of garbage examined. Musca domestica 

 was also reared, as was also another species known as 

 Phormia regina, but it seems from these observations, 

 although they were limited to a single locality in Cen- 

 tral Ohio, that the recently acquired general opinion 

 to the effect that the typhoid fly breeds abundantly in 

 vegetable refuse when it has reached the proper fer- 

 menting stage is due many times to the mistake of 

 considering the stable fly and its larvae as those of M. 

 domestica. And this is an important point, since the 

 stable fly is rather rarely found in houses and on food 

 and therefore is not an important carrier of disease. 



The substances in which flies will breed were care- 

 fully investigated in the city of Liverpool by Mr. Rob- 

 ert Newstead, lecturer in economic entomology and 



