INSBETS AND DISEASE 
It has generally been recommended that the manure itself should 
be kept in a dark vault or pit from which flies are shut out by screens, 
or in a tight covered box. The health officer of Asheville, N. C., 
where an unusually successful anti-fly campaign has been carried out, 
believes that screening of manure has been over-emphasized and 
that tightly floored boxes and thorough and complete cleaning up of 
these floors at frequent intervals are the main desiderata. He points 
out that most manure already contains fly maggots when placed in 
the bin and that an elaborately screened bin is hard to clean so 
thoroughly that development may not take place in the manure left 
behind. 
- A method of storing manure which is specially applicable to 
military camps depends on the fact that flies cannot breed readily 
in this material when it is closely packed. A rectangular area of 
sround is staked off and the manure is built up into compact heaps, 
the sides being kept straight and beaten hard with shovels. The ad- 
jacent ground is also beaten hard and loose straw is placed in small 
windrows about a foot from the edge. The absence of air in 
the interior of the heap, with the high temperature and chemical 
products due to bacterial fermentation, makes the manure highly un- 
favorable for fly development, and any larve which succeed in de- 
veloping in the surface layer will pass out and pupate in the ring of 
straw, which should be swept up every two or three days and burned. 
The United States Bureau of Entomology has devoted special 
attention to the problem of chemical treatment of manure for the 
purpose of poisoning the maggots which might otherwise be bred 
therein. Any one who is interested in the control of this insect pest 
should write to the Bureau of Entomology, Washington, D. C., and 
to the Department of Agriculture of his own State, for the latest 
recommendations in regard to this method of treatment, which is 
constantly being improved and made more economical and efficient. 
The following suggestions are taken from Farmers’ Bulletin 851 of 
the United States Department of Agriculture and represent the best 
procedures available in 1917. 
For manure or other refuse not to be used as a fertilizer, 
powdered borax is the best chemical preventive of fly breeding; 
.62 pound per 8 bushels of manure, or about 1 pound per 16 cubic 
feet, will destroy 90 per cent. of the larve present. The borax 
should be applied in solution, or water should be sprinkled on after 
scattering dry borax evenly over the pile. 
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