The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1911-04-19
HOW TO RID THE
Community OF FLIES

.ains among many other good things
a splendid article on "a plan to rid
. community of Flies" AS this city
is now Sighting the fly nuisance and
attempting to minimize the spread
Of diseaae through this greatest of
all medilms. the Herald believes its
readers will read the article with
more tn an passing interest and give
to it the CONSIDERATION it justly de-
serves. If the directions as set forth
in the article are carried out there
is little doubt that the community
will have solved to an astonishing de-
gree the alb atement of the fly NUS
ancs. The writer, Clifton +. Hodge.
pr fessor of biology of Clark uni
versity. says;
ut is easy enough to do it, If you
only know how It's easy to do every
hing, If you only know how"
This bit of 7-year-old philosophy
Of life caught my ear from two little
boys as they strolled one summer af-
ternoon; and I have been thinking
it over ever sincc--how hard the not
knowing, how easy the knowing how
renders work of all kinds. Think of
suitos. and ten have yielded the out.
doors to the enemy, retiring into inn
prisonment tchind expensive and
disagreeable bars of screen wire. l
have seen tyYo teaspoonfuls of kero-
sene applied to two rain barrels rem
der the winlow-screens of neigh
oorhood unn ecessary.
In another instance a pleasure park
has been llid out with extensive
ponds for lilies and lotus, and
the mosquitoes made it uninhabita-
ole. 1t was proposed to fill in the
ponds, but the boys in the vicinity,
under the direction of the park COM
missioner, stocked them with min
nows, and the mosquitoes completely
disappeared. How easy the knowing
how made ia good lark for the
ooys, and the city saved thousands Of
dollars and 9, beautiful bit of park
The mosquitoes were painfully an
uoying, but we might never have
been stirred 10 effective action had 1t
not been discovered that certain.
species carrie malaria, and another
species yellow fever. Then somebody
aad to find out to be rid of them.
The commsn house-f1y has been
snown the world over as filthy nuis-
lnce. Recently it has been convicted
Of carrying ell manner of filth dis
ease. 1t has been rechristened the
typhoid fly by Doctor Howard; ana
since 1t breeds in filth, feeds on filth,
ar besmears and bespecks with filth
everything it touches, Doctor Stiles
Of bookworm fame, has also renam-
ed it appropriately the "filth-fly.
Row comes the problem: How can
we best extefminate the insect?
Our attempts hitherto to solve tn
fly problem fave beer expensive, la
borious and iutils. We have again
shut ourselves up in prison behind
bars of f1y-screen, invented all man
ner Of disagreeable devices-fly spat-
ters, sticky and poison iiy-papers and
tri ling little eraps-to kill the few
that break into our prison houses;
and to cap the climax Of stupidity
we provide the enemy free breeding
places in our stable cellars and give
them all the food they need at our
kitchen doors.
Aside from disease caused by flies
the most expensive and disagreeable
element of the present situation is
the ny-screen, to keep ourselves in
jail with which is estimated to cost
annually at least ten million dollars.
Wy not try for awhile putting the
flies in prison, and let ourselves out?
a Ten-Day Generation.
A recent solution of the fly prob
lem has been of the sort indicated
IA fI,1 ,rrl- irct
mosquitoes, and has attacked the
breeding places. Mosquitoes breed
in stagnant water flies in manure and
in other decomposing matter of all
sorts. 1t is a comparatively easy
matter to drain fill, oil or stock with
fishes the pools of neighborhood. 1t
is an extremely difficult and complex
operation to treat all accumulations
of waste matter SO that flies cannot
breed in them.
A generation of flies to be produced
requires only ten days, and in the
cities, even if all stable manure were
removed weekly, there would still re-
main the miles of cutters and sew
ers, the dumps, vacant lots, alleys and
accidental accommodations everywhere.
In the country even if all stables
and barn-yard accommodations were
plowed under weekly, or even daily,
there would still be the miles OF road
sides and acres Of pasture, so that,
as Doctor Howard says, we can never
hope to eXterminate the typhoid-1y
in The country by this line of attack
According to recent Investigations,
flies rarely travel more than five
hundred yards from the place where
they breed. Every fly begins as an
egg deposited in some kind of or
saLic filth, It matches. into a tiny
maggot within a few hours, begins to
feed and grow, completes its growth
and comes out as a perfect fly in
possibly ten days. 1t then requires
at least fourteen days to mature its
first batch of eggs, and it may live
to mature and DEPOSIT at least six
layings, of from one hundred and
twenty TO one hundred and fifty eggs
each. This means. that in catching
one fly we may be preventing the
Matching of nearly thousand others.
If We only knew how To catch a fly,
now easy it might be to exterminate
the pest.
In attempting to deal with the fly
problem in cities. boards of health
=