The house fly : disease carrier an account of its dangerous activities and of the means of destroying it / by L. O. Howard.

  • Leland Ossian Howard
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The house fly : disease carrier an account of its dangerous activities and of the means of destroying it / by L. O. Howard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I 4 THE HOUSE FLY—DISEASE CARRIER ble it, the house fly can be distinguished by havdng no bristles on the sides of the thorax above the attach- ment of the last pair of legs and by having the vein that ends near the tip of the wing distinctly elbowed, a short distance before its apex. Several different kinds of Tachinidse, Dexidse and Sarcophagidae have a superficial resemblance to the house fly, and, like it, have the elbowed vein, but all of them differ from the house fly in possessing a row of bristles above the point of attachment of the last pair of legs. The only other family containing species that might be mis- taken for the house fly is the Anthomyidse, but none of these has an elbowed vein. “In the foregoing paragraph I stated that the house fly can be distinguished from nearly all of the other kinds of flies that resemble it by the two characters mentioned. We have, in this country, a species agree- ing with it even in regard to the two characters given. Indeed the resemblance is so close that only an ex- amination under a lens or microscope will reveal the principal difference existing between these two spe- cies. I refer to Musca antumnalis DeGeer.* In the male of this form the eyes are in contact on the upper part of the head, whereas in the male of the house fly the eyes are widely separated and the black stripe be- tween them is of nearly the same width throughout its length. In the female of antumnalis the dark stripe between the eyes is only as wide as the added breadth of the narrowest part of the two gray stripes which *The Musca corvina Fabricius, 1781.
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