Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 81.djvu/49

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THE HOUSE FLY
43

require that exposed surfaces of manure on platform cars or in stables, yards and fields be either screened or treated once a week to prevent the breeding of flies?

Remedies for Flies

Screen buildings: and prevent flies from breeding.

All living rooms in houses, and especially the kitchen and dining room, sick-rooms, and all hotels, restaurants, markets and stores where food supplies are sold or stored should be fitted with screens to. keep out flies.

Breeding places of flies should be abolished where possible by not allowing manure, garbage or filth to accumulate or by screening it to keep flies away, or by treating it to kill the maggots. Manure treated with chloride of lime each day will not produce flies. Kerosene or one of the so-called soluble or miscible oils sold everywhere for spraying orchards will probably kill the maggots if the outer two inches is saturated with the liquid.

Flies in houses may be killed by the use of insect powder, fly-paper, or by five-per-cent. sweetened formalin placed about the rooms in saucers. A recent circular[1] from the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station recommends one tablespoonful of commercial formalin (40 per cent.) to a half pint teacup of half milk and half water. The liquid is exposed in a shallow plate with a slice of bread in it to give more space for the flies to alight while drinking. The author of this circular, Professor R. I. Smith, states that in this way

Horse Manure piled in the Suburbs, in a suitable condition to breed many flies.
  1. R. I. Smith, Press Bulletin No. 23. North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station.