The house-fly : Musca domestica Linn. its structure, habits, development, relation to disease and control / by C. Gordon Hewitt.

  • Hewitt, C. Gordon (Charles Gordon), 1885-1920.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The house-fly : Musca domestica Linn. its structure, habits, development, relation to disease and control / by C. Gordon Hewitt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    119/414 (page 97)
    entire pile of manure was estimated at not less than 1000 lbs., of which the observer estimated that two-thirds was infested. The pile would contain, therefore, about 450,000 larvae in round numbers. Howard (1911) states 'that 160 larvae and 146 puparia were counted in a quarter of a pound of rather well-infested horse- manure taken from a manure pile in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., on August 9th. He rightly points out, however, that this number cannot be taken as an average, since no larvae are found in perhaps the greater part of horse-manure piles; nor does it show the limit of what can be found since, on the same date, about 200 puparia were found in less than one cubic inch of manure taken from a spot two inches below the surface of the pile where the larvae had evidently congregated in considerable numbers prior to pupating1. The practical importance of the foregoing observations, while requiring no further emphasis, will be considered in a future chapter. 1 In a series of experiments carried on during the summer of 1913, an account of which will be published in the Journal of Economic Entomology, Vol. 7, 1914, I was able to obtain considerable evidence of the uneven distribution of the larvae of M. domestica in the manure pile. My observations and temperature records showed that the distribution of the larvae was peripheral and that the internal heat of a well piled manure heap, in which the manure had been piled at one time, was too great to permit the larvae to penetrate to any depth. H. H.-F.