The log cabin Democrat., 1921-06-24
Mankind's Most Dangerous Enemy
 The Common Fly.

Ana there came a grlevous swarm or files into the house of Pharaoh. ana into all the land of Egypt; and the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flles.-Exodus SPA.
 Time and experience have shown the fly to be mankinds most danger ous enemy of the insect and animal world. The fly has carried death to more beings than have all poisonous reptiles and beasts of prey put to- gether.
 The mosquito has exacted it's toll of yellow fever; the flea of the rat. m all It's minuteness, has striken many husky seaman with the bubonic plague, and the tsetse fly, that scourge of the topics, has caused numberless deaths among the sleeping sickness; yet, all these-and, incidentally, their days are becoming numbered are not to be compared with our common house fly. Their death dealing ef- forts were confined to single disease each. Our fly, however, is a many headed Hydra. He carries a germ of typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera infan- tum, dysentery, summer diarrhea, and those of host of less common d- seas.
 Flies are the aeroplanes of death dealing germs. The fly dimes upon anything which is rotten and vile, and loads himself up, inside and out, with cargoes of bacteria in the man. ure pile, stable, carcass, or any other source of filth, and then navigates the air straight to the food stuffs, where he unloads or rakes off part of the vile cargo for children and adults to eat.
 It is estimated that the fly may, at any time, carry a cargo of from 500 to 5,500,000 bacteria. Among the germs he carries my be not only those of typhoid cholera, diarrhea, tuberculosis and >other communicable diseases, but also those of gangrene from vile diseases, septicemia from putrid infections, anthrax from par ! tially decomposed diseased hides, and any end all other sources to which he resorts to satisfy his depraved ap- petite.
 l What could be more nauseating and dangerous than to eat food thus be- fouled? And yet, this is what one must do unless everything we eat and drink is protected from these loathsome and pestilental disease spreaders.
 As the fly scatters these germs everywhere with their death-dealing possibilities, the proper protection from them is to make everything about the house and premises so clean that the fly can find nothing to sub- sist upon; and to see that all kinds of food are so covered and protected that this foul pest will have no chance to drop any of it's filth upon that which will afterward enter the human stomach.
 The fly is a prodigious breeder. IL lays about 120 eggs at time. They develop to the adult stage in about ten days, varying somewhat with eli mate and conditions. This gives 12C flies in ten days, ready for business As probably one-half will be females this gives 60 females, each to produce another 120 or 60 females in the next ten days, or 3,600 female flies at the end of twenty days; and again re beating the process so that at the end of forty days the progeny of that one ancestral fly will amount tc 12,960,0OO females or 25,920,000 flies or in ninety days the progeny woulo reach the incredible number of 385,- 928 100000, 900 flies ready to scatter disease and torture and vex human ity.