56 ACCOUNTS, ETC., OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 



valuable results as regards methods oE treatment for the prevention 

 of such infestation. An exhibit illustrating the subject, brought up 

 to date, has been set up in the Central Hall. (Cf. B. M. Return, 

 1914, page 123.) 



The cases of specimens illustrating the part played by insects as 

 carriers of disease have been largely used for instruction of classes 

 of men of the Royal Army Medical Corps, the Sanitary Corps, 

 and Army Veterinary Corps. Parties of these men have been 

 brought to the Museum almost daily for demonstrations and lectures 

 by their officers. 



The War Office having, through the Press, drawn attention to 

 the penalty attaching to the destruction of Homing- or Carrier- 

 pigeons, a case of birds has been placed in the Central Hall to show 

 the difference between these pigeons and the ordinary Dovecot- 

 pigeons, Wood-pigeons, Rock-doves and Stock-doves. Explanatory 

 labels have also been prepared. The specimens of Carrier-pigeons 

 exhibited were specially selected and presented to the Museum by 

 Captain A. H. Osman, of the Pigeon Service Branch of the War 

 Office. 



Hihernation of the House-fiy. 



Considerable attention has been given in the Entomological 

 Department to the problem of the hibernation of the house-fly. As 

 a result of the publicity given to the matter in the Press and 

 elsewhere, a very large number of hibernating and other flies found 

 in houses in the winter have been sent to the Museum ; and in 

 this way it is hoped to get evidence on a wide scale. Very few of 

 the specimens so far received are true house-flies, and none of these 

 had been found in a hibernating condition. The vast majority of 

 the flies found hibernating proved on examination to belong to a 

 species {Pollenia rudis) which is not unlike the house-fly and which 

 is frequently mistaken for it. This species lives out of doors 

 in the summer, and only enters houses at the approach of cold 

 weather in order to find shelter and a place in which to hibernate. 

 Its mode of life is different from that of the house-fly, and there is 

 no reason to apprehend any danger to health owing to its presence 

 in the house. While the evidence so far obtained gives no support 

 to the view that house-flies usually hibernate in the adult state, it 

 helps greatly to explain how that view may have arisen and why it 

 is so widely entertained. 



Protection of Animals. 



The question of the protection of birds and other animals in our 

 Crown Colonies and Protectorates continues to be the subject of 

 considerable correspondence between the Colonial Office and the 

 Museum. Papers relating to Zanzibar, Fiji, Gambia, Trinidad, 

 Gibraltar, Weihaiwei, British Honduras, South Georgia, Federated 

 Malay States, Turks and Caicos Islands, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, 

 have been sent to the Museum for observations and reports. 



