158 SANITARY ENTOMOLOGY 



accumulations under loosely built platforms to be a fertile fly breeding 

 condition. 



Shipment of Manure. — When manure is shipped by car, the railroads 

 should be required to remove it promptly and the contractors should be 

 required to unload promptly and distribute it in such a manner that it 

 will not be a source of flies to the communitj' where it is unloaded. If 

 unavoidable delays do not permit prompt handling of this manure, it 

 should be treated with borax water. 



Cleaning Up. — Well drained cement floors in stables are by all means 

 the most sanitary and lend themselves best to cleanliness. If it is 

 impracticable to have cement floors, the dirt floors should be sloped to 

 drain well and should be made hard by saturation with oil or mixing 

 with other soils which pack better, as certain types of clay. The floors 

 should be swept daily after removal of the manure, and sprinkled with 

 borax water, or limed. Frequent treatment with a creosote compound 

 is of value. The ground around hitching posts and picket lines becomes 

 soggy with urine and manure, unless treated by digging up the soil for 

 several inches and saturating it with oil, and then tamping it hard. 

 Stable yards should not be allowed to become filled with manure. They 

 should be swept, or raked or scraped up daily and the manure removed 

 (see plate VII). A filthy stable yard may be the source of scourges of 

 flies. 



Incineration. — When manure cannot be sold, chemically treated, 

 farmed out, or stacked to prevent fly breeding, it must be burned. This 

 is often a necessity in army encampments. In dry sections the windrow 

 incineration may be practiced. The teams drop their loads in great, 

 long windrows, the horses straddling the rows. These are spotted with 

 oil and set afire. The wooden chimney windrow which was practiced at 

 Edgewood Arsenal consists of a windrow of logs piled to form a horizontal 

 chimney over which the manure is piled and then fire is set to the wood. 

 The hillside incinerator devised by Dr. Mann at Quantico, Virginia, 

 consisting principally of iron rails and chicken wire screen or gratings 

 under which a fire is burning, is practical for small camps. The hammock 

 incinerator, a woven wire hammock or two suspended over a fire, will 

 do as a temporary expedient for a small detachment on temporary duty, 

 or for field parties of hunters or investigators. Fwrnace incinerators can 

 reduce the manure to an ash and save whatever is of value in tKe asb. 



Need of Rigid Inspection. — It is not only army camps that need 

 to have a rigid inspection system as regards manure disposal. Every city 

 which has any regard for the public health should insist on proper 

 inspection and regulation of stables and places where manure accumulates. 

 It is not uncommon in many cities to see boxes of manure in alleys swarm- 



