Housefly

“ An observant eye can now discover state visits to our dipterists from interested persons carrying their flies with them, animated discussions in the corridor, knots of excited enthusiasts in the Lavatory, in the Library, everywhere—and everywhere the subject discussed is the same: How does the Housefly pass the winter? ”

“ Each tiny flower having a hairy calyx, that acts as a stockade against ants and other such crawling pilferers, we suspect there are abundant sweets secreted in the fleshy ring at the base of the styles for the benefit of the numerous flies seen hovering about. Among other visitors, watch the common housefly alighting on the knobby stigma, a most convenient landing place, where he leaves some pollen carried on his underside from other nightshade blossoms. ”

“ It has been commonly but not truly said that the principal breeding places of the house-fly are the mews and the farmyards where manure is allowed to accumulate; the house-fly has a preference for horse dung before cow dung, which is preferred by some other kinds of flies; however, near towns, the domestic dust-bins, heaps of market garbage, and deposits of town refuse give rise to a worse plague of house-flies than stables. All these flies deposit batches of white eggs, and are careful to place them as much as possible in crevices and shielded from exposure to strong light, or from draughts. ”

“ There are several species of flies which are commonly found in houses, although but one of these should be called the house fly proper. This is the Musca domestica L. (fig. 1) and is a medium-sized, grayish fly, with its mouth parts spread out at the tip for sucking up liquid substances. It is found in nearly all parts of the world. On account of the conformation of its mouth parts, the house fly can not bite, yet no impression is stronger in the minds of most people than that this insect does occasionally bite. ”

“ People frequently state that they have been bitten by a house-fly—a sheer impossibility. What really happens is that they mistake the very similar stable fly for the house-fly. If one of these insects be captured and examined, we shall find not the soft fleshy proboscis of the house-fly, but a cruel looking, awl-like mouth easily able to penetrate the human skin. ”

“ Favorite breeding places of house fly. Such places should be kept as clean and neat as the front yard.
The presence of flies in the home is usually a sign of untidiness; but it means more, it means that disease and often death is hovering over the home. We are too apt to consider the fly simply as a nuisance when we should take it more seriously. The child should be led to realize that the fly should not be tolerated in the home, that it is dangerous and that it can and must be destroyed. ”

“ GENERAL LIFE HISTORY Whereas the blue-bottle rarely enters the dwellings of mankind, except gravid females led by the sense of smell in search of fish, or flesh meat, and (less eagerly) sweets, both species of house-fly and both sexes seem to delight in the mere odour of humanity; breeding females will seek the larder and the dust-bin, but others will very provokingly pervade all quarters. Although avoiding a dark or deeply shaded room, the house-fly seems to like partial shade ”

“ As the days lengthen the common house-fly becomes vastly more common than F. canicularis, the ‘lesser house-fly,’ and the latter now tend to aggregate in those rooms of our houses not devoted to cooking, and may frequently be noticed flying in a jerky and disconcerting manner around the chandeliers or bedposts in unfrequented living- or bed-rooms. ”

“ They breed in decaying animal matter.
-3- There is still another species, smaller than any of those so far mentioned, which is sometimes called the "lesser house fly." [7] This insect is distinguished from the ordinary house fly by its paler and more pointed body. The male, which is commoner than the female, has large pale patches at the base of the abdomen, which are translucent when the fly is seen on the window pane. These little flies are not the young of the larger flies. Flies do not grow after the wings have once expanded and dried. ”

“ Hence it is no wonder that they increase to enormous numbers in favourable climates. They are thought to pass the winter chiefly in the pupal state. The House-fly is now very widely distributed over the world; it sometimes occurs in large numbers away from the dwellings of man. ”

“ The little creature proved to be a slender fly with a tapering, pointed body clothed with fine silky scales, which in some positions were white as snow with the changing iridescence of mother-of-pearl; thus in its ever-varying flight the insect appeared and disappeared according as the rays of light fell upon it at different angles. In size the creature is but small, less than a house-fly, but when magnified its beauty is exquisite—the wings decked with rainbow colours, the thorax rich emerald green, and in life the eyes also greenish and opalescent. ”

“ In general the house fly and other species which breed in vegetable matter are attracted to vegetable substances, while the blowflies will come most readily to animal matter. This rule, of course, is not absolute, as flies are less restricted in feeding than in breeding habits, and, as is well known, the house fly is attracted to a greater or less extent to any moist material, especially if it has an odor. ”

“ These creatures may well be imagined to have developed out of some primæval species by reason of the increase of mankind upon this planet. The mere presence of the house-fly denotes some nuisance more or less remote; the local density of the brood indicates the degree and the proximity of unsanitary conditions. Under present circumstances the visitation of the house-fly is Nature's intimation that peril of a very insidious character is about. Very properly, Nature's messenger will not be denied, and pertinaciously manifests herself to us indoors! ”

“ THE STRUCTURE OF THE HOUSE-FLY The house-fly has quite the typical insect form, inasmuch as there are three well defined sections of body—the head, the chest or thorax, and the abdomen; also it has three pairs of legs, each with nine joints, of which five joints constitute what may be called the foot. The twelve segments of the maggot are observable as twelve rings in the puparium, but in the fly the three which form the thorax look like one, whilst the eight which should theoretically exist in the abdomen look like four or five, until the rings of the ovipositor are counted. ”

“ This family contains many of the most abundant flies, including the House-fly, Blue-bottles or Blow-flies, Green-bottles, and other forms which, though very common, are perhaps not discriminated from one another by those who are not entomologists. The larvae live on carrion and decaying or excrementitious matters. The common House-fly, Musca domestica, runs through its life-history in a very short time. ”

“ In 1895, the writer made a study of the house-fly, not from this standpoint, but from a desire to learn the principal source from which our houses are supplied with this eternal nuisance, with a view to being able to suggest remedial measures. Experimental work in this direction was continued for some years. In the course of this work he early decided that an overwhelming majority of the house-flies found in domiciles breed in horse manure. ”

“ On warm bright days without wind, during the absence of the birds, I have frequently seen a company of from half a dozen to a dozen or fifteen of the parasitical fly wheeling about in the air above the nest, hovering and gambolling together, just like house-flies in a room in summer; but always on the appearance of the birds, returning from their feeding-ground, they would instantly drop down and disappear into the nest. ”

“ Close observations of the habits of the house-fly reveal the very appurtenant fact that the movements of newly-hatched flies, for their first six or seven days' active life, differ from those of a more mature age, when the breeding instinct has grown strong. The latter are disposed to locate themselves for the rest of their lives in and about one attractive spot, and they are indisposed to fly high above ground or to travel far, unless it be with the object of leaving an unsatisfying locality and discovering a better place. ”

“ A careful screening of windows and doors during the summer months, with the supplementary use of sticky fly papers, is a preventive measure against house flies known to everyone, and there seems to be little hope in the near future of much relief by doing away with the breeding places. A single stable in which a horse is kept will supply house flies for an extended neighborhood. ”

“ After emerging from the ground, the fly withdraws the bag-like extrusion and cleans itself. Its body soon grows fit and it becomes very active, as long as daylight and warm weather favour it; otherwise it seeks shelter and becomes quiescent; however, artificial light and heat will awaken it to nocturnal activity. Sweets, carrion, and filth are all attractive to the blue-bottle, but the house-fly and the lesser house-fly also find extraordinary attraction in both man and his dwelling. ”

“ The prevailing opinion that the house fly lives through the winter as an adult, hiding in cracks and crevices of buildings, etc., appears to be erroneous. Under outdoor conditions house flies are killed during the first really cold nights, that is, when the temperature falls to about 15° or 10° F. In rooms and similar places protected from winds and partially heated during the winter flies have been kept alive in cages for long periods, but they never lived through the entire winter. ”

“ It seldom visits the interior of the forests, in any portion of our country, but prefers the skirts of woods along damp or swampy places, and the borders of creeks, pools, or rivers. It seizes insects on wing with great agility, snapping its bill like a true Fly-catcher, now and then making little sallies after a group of those diminutive flies that seem as if dancing in the air, and cross each other in their lines of flight, in a thousand various ways. ”

“ In experiments at both Dallas, Tex., and Bethesda, Md., house flies have been found emerging during April from heavily infested manure heaps which had been set out and covered with cages during the preceding autumn. In the Southern States, during warm periods in midwinter, house flies may emerge and become somewhat troublesome; they frequently lay eggs on warm days.
The second way in which the house fly may pass the winter is by continuous breeding. House flies congregate in heated rooms with the approach of the winter season. If no food or breeding materials are present they eventually die. ”

“ The fly keeps himself very clean. After each meal it brushes its head, first on one side, and then on the other, with its first pair of legs. Then it will rub the two legs together to get off the dirt.
7. The fly lays its eggs in the kind of food its young can eat. In a short time a little white grub hatches out, which does nothing but eat until it is of full size.
8. Then its skin becomes hard, and shrinks. It lies still, and does not eat anything for several days; but, inside its hard shell, wings are growing, and by-and-by the shell cracks open, and a full-grown fly comes out. ”

“ The amateur entomologist and the nature-student will observe that the flies which pester the gardener at work are mainly other than the common house-fly. The reader, nevertheless, will like to know if something more cannot be done to stable manure for exterminating maggots, whether of house-flies or the many various filth flies, already hatched and growing therein. ”

“ The house-fly, as we know it, is absolutely the developed product of human insanitation; scientifically and practically it is a new "species" of an old "genus" established by a long course of breeding in man-made environments. ”

“ Sutton. "But the house-fly lays a great many little eggs.
3. "She finds some old dirty rubbish, like rotten cabbage or stuff that is left by careless cooks lying about. In this she puts her eggs, and then she dies. Little grubs are born from them.
4. "They begin to eat as soon as they are born, and very soon they turn into flies, after going to sleep for a while first in a kind of little hard skin or shell. They change into flies while they are inside this shell."
5. "What do the flies do when they cannot find any dirty rubbish?" said Rose. ”

“ Not content with the supply of flies from its web. however, the spider goes forth upon the twigs of the fly-bush, and walking about in safety among the glands, pulls oil' such insects as it desires and either devours them on the spot or returns with them to its web. Not less wonderful is the fly which pollinates the flowers of the fly-bush, ft, too, is enabled, by possessing long legs, to walk in safety among the glandular hairs, and it takes pay for the service of having pollinated its flowers by puncturing the leaves and with its long proboscis sucking the juices of the plant. ”

“ Indeed there are some insects which measure nearly a foot in length, but there are, on the other hand, beetles no longer than one hundredth part of an inch. When we examined the house-fly it is not unlikely that we found some minute creatures living upon it. None of these is likely to be an insect, but as they are closely related we may mention them here. Beneath the wings of the house fly there are often minute, red, six legged young mites, all eagerly sucking the juices of their host. ”

“ As previously stated, fly papers, poisons, and traps are at best only temporary expedients. The most logical method of abating the fly nuisance is the elimination or treatment of all breeding places. It would appear from what is known of the life history and habits of the common house fly that it is perfectly feasible for cities and towns to reduce the numbers of this annoying and dangerous insect so greatly as to render it of comparatively slight account. ”