509 
thrown to some fowls, when they were eaten with as much avidity as 
if they had been so many grains of wheat. However much, therefore, 
we may deprecate the keeping of fowls in large towns, we must, from 
the evidence which has been adduced, consider them as important 
contributory factors in the destruction of the earlier stages of the 
house-fly. It should be pointed out, however, that fowls are kept in 
a very few of the stable yards, so that in the majority of cases the 
flies go on breeding uninterruptedly, and, so far as one can gather, 
the larvae and pupae have few, if any, other natural enemies but 
those already mentioned. 
“In one case, where large quantities of a disinfectant (Sharrant s 
disinfectant powder) were used in the stable, no larvae or pupae were 
found in the manure, though they were swarming in a mass of waste 
hops in a separate division of the same midden. Fly larvae were 
also absent in another instance where chloride of lime had been used 
freely. However, one is not prepared, at the present moment, to 
state definitely that the presence of either of these agents had any 
deleterious effect on the fly larvae, or that they acted as a deterrent ; 
it may have been a simple coincidence, and the matter requires 
further investigation. 
“All types of middensteads were infected— roofed , vaulted and 
open. 
" The photographs (figs. 6-9) submitted with this report will afford 
some idea of the enormous numbers of the earlier stages of the 
house-fly which were found in stable manure. 
“2. Only one midden containing warm spent hops was inspected, 
and this was found to be as badly infested as any of the stable 
middens. The pupae (fig. 1 2) were found collected together in large 
masses, and the larvae swarmed in the warmer parts of the material. 
" 3 - A great deal of time was given to the inspection of ashpits, 
and it was found that wherever fermentation had taken place, and 
artificial heat had been thus produced, such places were infested with 
house-fly larvae and pupae, often to the same alarming extent as in 
stable manure. Such ashpits as these almost invariably contained 
,ar ff e quantities of old bedding or straw and paper, paper mixed wit 
human excreta or old rags, manure from rabbit hutches, &c., or a 
mixture of all of these. (See figs. 10, 11.) , 
"About 25 per cent, of the ashpits examined were thus 111 es e 
