from London Has the Ministry of Health unexpectedly won its war on flies? asks the "Daily News." A rare, but not unprecedented sequel this summer has followed the usual mysterious hibernation of flies. Midsunimer Day has passed, there have been spells of hot weather, but the common housefly, officially described by the South ' Kensington scientists. as "one of mans greatest enemies" is in our midst, not in swarms, but in enormously reduced numbers. This sudden decrease in the population amounts almost to a phenomenon.
The absence of flies en masse makes the warning picture about "The Fly Danger" which adorns the Cromwell Road entrance to the Natural History Museum look rather ridiculous. A "Daily News" representative who scoured London for flies and met witn astonishing failure, could find no one at South Kensington who regarded the fly problem seriously. The popularity of a certain music-hall song with regard to the hibernation of the comuion insect was perhaps responsible for this levity among scientists., The place of honour in the Central Hall of the Museum is occupied by the housefly in a glass case and it is one of the few places in London where a swarm of flies is to be seen. And these flies, being for exhibition purposes, ' are all dead, and are—probably last year's flies. There is a realistic representation of a lunch of cold ham, milk, roll of bread, and a basket of plums, and the Mu-scum's fly expert has delsbsracely sprinkled all the food with flies as a public warning.
A scientific correspondent _attributes the remarkable scarcity of flies to the following causes:—
Increasing use of petrol.
Abolition of dangerous fly-lairs, such as stable yards, now garages.
Shortage of sugar.
Recent heavy rains and thunder-
Universal spring-cleaning after five years, which has destroyed egg-laying haunts.
Success of "Swat that Fly"
canipaign.
Lord Montagu of Beaulieu attributed a former mysterious reduction of the numbers of flies in London before the war to the refreshing and antiseptic. petrol vapour emitted by _motor-cars, cycles, and buses. Flies cannot stand petrol or the smell of it.
West End restaurants and hotels noticed the phenomenon. There are no flies in my kitchen," said a chef, "and I haven't used a trap, or fly-paper, or a castor-oil string this season."
But what London is losing on the flies it appears to be making up on the uiosquitoes, which have me very annoying lately, especially in the' suburbs and on 1 commons.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.