Now it is very true that no one has seen a fly feasting upon the blood of a heifer or sheep dying or just dead of splenic fever, has then watched it settle upon and bite some person, and has traced the following stages of the disease. But it is positively known that a person has been bitten by a fly, and has then exhibited all the symptoms of charbon, the place of the bite being the primary seat of the infection. We know also, beyond all doubt, the eagerness with which flies will suck up blood, and we likewise know the strange persistence of the disease "germs."

Again, the avidity of flies for purulent matter is not a thing of mere possibility. In Egypt, where ophthalmia is common, and where the "plague of flies" seems never to have been removed, it is reported as almost impossible to keep these insects away from the eyes of the sufferers. The infection which they thus take up they convey to the eyes of persons still healthy, and thus the scourge is continually multiplied.

A third case which seems established beyond question is the agency of mosquitoes in spreading elephantiasis. These so-called sanitary agents suck from the blood of one person the Filariae, the direct cause of the disease, and transfer them to another. The manner in which this process is effected will appear simple enough if we reflect that the mosquito begins operations by injecting a few drops of fluid into its victim, so as to dilute the blood and make it easier to be sucked.

So much being established it becomes in the highest degree probable that every infectious disease may be, and actually is, at times propagated by the agency of flies. Attention turned to this much neglected quarter will very probably go far to explain obscure phenomena connected with the distribution of epidemics and their sudden outbreaks in unexpected quarters. I have seen it stated that in former outbreaks of pestilence flies were remarkably numerous, and although mediaeval observations on Entomology are not to be taken without a grain of salt, the tradition is suggestive. Perhaps the Diptera have their seasons of unusual multiplication and emigration. A wave of the common flea appears to have passed over Maidstone in August, 1880.

We now see the way to some practical conclusions not without importance. Recognizing a very considerable part of the order of Diptera, or two-winged flies, as agents in spreading disease, it surely follows that man should wage war against them in a much more systematic and consistent manner than at present. The destruction of the common house-fly by "papier Moure," by decoctions of quassia, by various traps, and by the so-called "catch 'em alive," is tried here and there, now and then, by some grocer, confectioner, or housewife angry at the spoliation and defilement caused by these little marauders. But there is no concerted continuous action--which after all would be neither difficult nor expensive--and consequently no marked success. Experiments with a view of finding out new modes of fly-killing are few and far between.

Every one must occasionally have seen, in autumn, flies as if cemented to the window-pane, and surrounded with a whitish halo. That in some seasons numbers of flies thus perish--that the phenomenon is due to a kind of fungus, the spores of which readily transfer the disease from one fly to another--we know. But here our knowledge is at fault. We have not learnt why this fly-epidemic is more rife in some seasons than others. We are ignorant concerning the methods of multiplying this fungus at will, and of launching it against our enemies. We cannot tell whether it is capable of destroying Stomoxys calcitram, the blowflies, gadflies, gnats, mosquitoes, etc. Experiment on these points is rendered difficult by the circumstance that the fungus is rarely procurable except in autumn, when some of the species we most need to destroy are not to be found. Another question is whether the fungus, if largely multiplied and widely spread, might not prove fatal to other than Dipterous insects, especially to the Hymenoptera, so many of which, in their character of plant-fertilizers, are highly useful, or rather essential to man.

Another fungus, the so-called "green muscardine" (Isaria destructor), has been found so deadly to insects that Prof. Metschnikoff, who is experimenting upon it, hopes to extirpate the Phylloxera, the Colorado beetle, etc., by its agency.

Coming to better known and still undervalued fly-destroyers, we have interfered most unwisely with the balance of nature. The substitution of wire and railings for live fences in so many fields has greatly lessened the cover both for insectivorous birds and for spiders. The war waged against the latter in our houses is plainly carried too far. Whatever may be the case at the Cape, in Australia, or even in Southern Europe, no British species is venomous enough to cause danger to human beings. Though cobwebs are not ornamental, save to the eye of the naturalist, there are parts of our houses where they might be judiciously tolerated: their scarcity in large towns, even where their prey abounds, is somewhat remarkable.

But perhaps the most effectual phase of man's war against the flies will be negative rather than positive, turning not so much on putting to death the mature individuals as in destroying the matter in which the larvae are nourished. Or if, from other considerations, we cannot destroy all organic refuse, we may and should render it unfit for the multiplication of these vermin. We have, indeed, in most of our large towns and in their suburbs, abolished cesspools, which are admirable breeding-places for many kinds of Diptera, and which sometimes presented one wriggling mass of larvae. We have drained many marshes, ditches, and unclean pools, rich in decomposing vegetable matter, and have thus notably checked the propagation of gnats and midges. I know an instance of a country mansion, situate in one of the best wooded parts of the home counties, which twenty years ago was almost uninhabitable, owing to the swarms of gnats which penetrated into every room. But the present proprietor, being the reverse of pachydermatous, has substituted covered drains for stagnant ditches, filled up a number of slimy ponds as neither useful nor ornamental, and now in most seasons the gnats no longer occasion any annoyance.

But if we have to some extent done away with cesspools and ditches, and have reaped very distinct benefit by so doing, there is still a grievous amount of organic matter allowed to putrefy in the very heart of our cities. The dust bins--a necessary accompaniment of the water-carriage system of disposing of sewage--are theoretically supposed to be receptacles mainly for organic refuse, such as coal-ashes, broken crockery, and at worst the sweepings from the floors. In sober fact they are largely mixed with the rinds, shells, etc., of fruits and vegetables, the bones and heads of fish, egg-shells, the sweepings out of dog-kennels and henhouses, forming thus, in short, a mixture of evil odor, and well adapted for the breeding-place of not a few Diptera.

The uses to which this "dust" is put when ultimately fetched away are surprising: without being freed from its organic refuse it is used to fill up hollows in building-ground, and even for the repair of roads. A few weeks ago I passed along a road which was being treated according to the iniquity of Macadam. Over the broken stones had been shot, to consolidate them, a complex of ashes, cabbage-leaves, egg and periwinkle shells, straw, potato-parings, a dead kitten (over which a few carrion-flies were hovering), and other promiscuous nuisances. The road in question, be it remarked, is highly "respectable," if not actually fashionable. The houses facing upon it are severely rated, and are inhabited chiefly by "carriage people." What, then, may not be expected in lower districts?

Much attention has lately been drawn to the fish trade of London. It has not, however, come out in evidence that the fish retailers, if they find a quantity of their perishable wares entering into decomposition, send out late in the evening a messenger, who, watching his opportunity, throws his burden down in some plot of building land, or over a fence. When I say that I have seen in one place, close alongside a public thoroughfare, a heap of about fifty herrings, in most active putrefaction and buzzing with flies, and some days afterward, in another place, some twenty soles, it will be understood that such nuisances can only be occasioned by dealers. To get rid of, or at least greatly diminish, carrion-flies, house-flies, and the whole class of winged travelers in disease, it will be, before all things, essential to abolish such loathsome malpractices. The dustbins must cease being made the receptacle for putrescent and putrescible matter, the destruction of which by fire should be insisted upon.

The banishment of slaughter-houses to some truly rural situation, where the blood and offal could be at once utilized, would be another step toward depriving flies of their pabulum in the larva state. An equally important movement would be the substitution of steam or electricity for horsepower in propelling tram-cars and other passenger carriages, with a view to minimize the number of horses kept within greater London. Every large stable is a focus of flies--Journal of Science.