Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1901 — HOW FLIES ARE MULTIPLIED. [ARTICLE]

HOW FLIES ARE MULTIPLIED.

Siasle Season Meant Millions of Descendants to One Family. Flies multiply at a prodigious rate. Given a temperature sufficiently high to hatch the eggs, their numbers are only limited by the amount of food available for them. Linnaeus is credited with the saying that three meat flies, by reason of their rapid multiplication, would consume a dead horse quicker than would a lion, and the fact that certain dlptera having some outward resemblance to the honey bee lay their eggs in the dead carcasses of animals probably led Samson and Virgil to make erroneous statements with regard to the genesis of honey and the manufacture of bees. The breeding of “gentles” for ground bait is an industry the practicers of which could probably give much information as to the nicety of choice exercised by flies in selecting material for feeding and egg-laying. According to Packard, the house fly female lays about 120 eggs, and the cycle of changes from egg to fly Is completed in less than three weeks, it seems probable that a female fly might have some 25,000,000 descendants in the course of a hot summer. Other varieties of flies multiply, I believe, still more rapidly. As flies multiply upon and in organic refuse of every kind, it is obvious that the sooner such refuse is placed where it cannot serve for the feeding and hatching of flies the more likely is the plague of flies to be lesened. The most commonly available method for the bestowal of organic refuse Is burial. The egg-laying of flies In dead carcasses commenced nt the very instant of death, or even before death In the case of enfeebled animals.—The Lancet.