Crossville chronicle. [volume] (Crossville, Tenn.) 1894-current, 1915-06-23
CHEAP FLY PREVENTION.
An Easy Way to Kill the Fly in the Egg
and the Maggot Stage.

"Swat the fly" is good war cry
but it is like locking the stable afte
the horse is stolen. There is a bette
one-"Swat the eggs" Probabl.
every magazine and newspaper in tn
United States printed last season from
one to score of arraignments of tn,
common house fly-the diseased breeder
the typhoid fly; the infantile paralysis
fly; in word, the twentieth century
pest, an enemy of mankind. "Swat
the fly" has become the slogan OF the
day.
RAPID INCREASE.
For every fly killed IN May there
Will be ten thousand less in June, a
million less IN July, and by September
the most ambitious boy, eager to earn
the prize for the greatest number of
flies killed, couldn't possibly lift the
progeny of this single fly which es-
capped him IN the springtime.
All very true; but where will all
these flies lay their eggs and rear
their precious babies? Can we find
the nests, can we destroy them by
wholesale, the larvae or the eggs? We
can, easily and cheaply, and every city
with ordinary regulations may become
a fiyless town.
Flies breed IN fifth, principally ma
nure, and the ordinary pile of stable
manure will bring forth enough flies to
keep five hundred families fighting the
pests from morning till night.
If one-tenth of the money invested IN
fly screens were spent on killing fly
eggs laid in manure piles and garbage
cans there would be no need OF the fly
screens which keep out the flies and
incidentally a large proportion Of the
coolrng breezes Of summer
Our Government has carried on an
extensive experiment with manure
piles and the eggs which each female
fly deposits therein by the thousand
1t Is ordinary boraX, one of the COM
monest and cheapest of minerals, pro-
duced in abundance in the United
States, and it takes very little to make
the fly egg quite worthless as future
fly. Borax costs about five cents a
pound, and the crude borax mine raj,
colemanite, considerably less, while |
three fifths of pound sprinkled
through 10 cubic feet--about eight |
bushels of manure will kill 80 per cent
OF the eggs and maggots of the fly.
MANY EXPERIMENTS.
A long series of experiments looking
to the destruction of fly eggs and fly |
larvae in manure piles has been carried |
on under the direction of DR.. l.. D. |
Howard, the entomoiogist of the De-
partment of Agriculture, the manure
being treated in boxes or cages, the
collection Of these resembling group
of huge beel ives. The manure, well
infested with fly eggs, was treated
with borax, kerosene, potassium cy /
anide, tormaldehyde, copper sulphate, !
Paris green and ten or dozen other
chemicals, but none gave satisfactory
results except the borax.
Strangely enough, the Isthmian Ca
nal Commission larvicide, consisting
Of carboIic acid, resin, caustic soda
and water. which kills mosquito larvae
in less thap half an hour, had but slight
effect upon fly larvae.
EFFECT ON MANURE.
An important consideration in the
oorax treatment is in the effect on the
manure. Some of the chemicals tested
rendered the manure dangerous as
fertilizer, making it more harmful
than beneficial to plant growth, but
borax not only makes the manure pos
sibly more beneficial as a fertilizer,
but prevents burning or fire-fanging,
a natural process with ordinary manure
piles which considerably reduces the
fertilizing effect. !
EASY TO APPLY.
The borax treatment is simplicity it.
self. DR.. Howard's advice is to apply
, TO 10 pounds of borax to every eight
bushels of manure Immediately upon
is removal from the barn, sitting the
oorax around the outer edges of the
pile with a common flour sitter and
hen sprinkle large watering pot full
If water over it.
The flies lay their eggs on the fresh