MODERN PLAGUES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4766, 20 October 1924, Page 4

MODERN PLAGUES.

INSECT AND OTHER PESTS. HEAVY PRICE BEING PAID. Some interesting tacts and figures were given in a recent interview accorded to the London Morning Post on the subjecf of modern plagues—insects and animal vermin —by Mi’ Alfred E. Moore, founder and honorary director of the College of Pestology. He referred to the widespread waste caused in this country and elsewhere by preventable insect and other pests. To start with the insects, the mental attitude adopted shows a deplorable lack of imagination and common sense. To give a common illustration. A well-meaning citizen sees a child being hit about the head. Immediately he or she sets in motion the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In the.next street he sees a horse being brutally beaten, and the nearest policeman is called upon, with the result of a summons being taken out by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the carter is fined or sent to prison. “ So far, well and good, but it is reported in the annalis of the Holy Inquisition that the worst penalty to which a heretic could be submitted was to be thrown into a cell to be eaten alive by ants. It is unpleasan:, perhaps, to say it, but it is more than probable that in the houses of the street where the child was being hit about the head and the horse was being brutally beaten hundreds of children were getting night and day instalments of the ghastliest torture that the Inquisitors could devise. And nothing is said or, done. In the case of the Inquisition the torture ended in death. In the case~ of the slum child its normal end 'is in disease that eventually finds its way to the hospitals for treatment. “ The risk of the parasite and of the infection that it is liable to carry is so great that I do not hesitate to eay that a child runs a greater risk in walking across the grass of a city park than it would if a wild bull was allowed to roam about there at large. The results of the bull’s action would be so obyious and sudden that precautions would be taken against it, whereas the action of the parasite, which could be eliminated at little cost, is so insidioue that no notice is taken. THE RAT PROBLEM. “ The rat presents another problem. His food bill alone in the British Isles amounts to 75 millions sterling a year, and to attempt to fight him and other pests the college, whose technical advice is sought from all' over the world, has an average income of. £7O 14s a. year. The seventyfive million estimate leaves out of account the damage done in nesting and in gnawing to get at food, and fails also to make any allowance for the spread of, sickness, an- extent of damage that has not yet been traced to its full limits, though it’ is known to be appalling in extent. “It jk not a pleasant thought to realise that the ham you buy in immaculately clean shops off glazed and polished slabs, served to you by white-aproned assistants, may as likely as not have fed a few hours before it was slaughtered on an infected rat, and may be pas King the infection directly to you, despite the brilliant cleanliness of your table linen and cutlery. All this because the Board of Agriculture has not the funds necessary to effect the annual saving of £75,000,000, and because of the lethargy of those whose imagination is too Torpid to realise the harm which the rat, who is careful not to advertise his presence, is doing. FLIES' AND INFANT DEATHS. “ There is the same lack of imagination over the fly danger. Born in putrification, he carries disease germs with him wherever he goes, infecting food, causing epidemics, and resulting in very many infant deaths. Moses had imagination when he terrorised

Egypt with a plague of flies; The facts to-day are known to the public,

and yet their imagination -s so little « stirred that they do not Instinctively < slaughter every fly in sight. < “Another pest that infests London , is the cockroach, and it is estimated that London possesses seventy-five tons of them. Cockroaches, Professor , Lefroy has shown, harbour protozoa and bacteria which they distribute about the kitchens, thereby spreading disease “ By a strange perversity popular instinct has fastened on the unfortunate earwig as a peculiarly loathsome insect, in point of fact he is the reverse, for he feeds eagerly on the eggs of flies, and if the earwigs are present in large numbers the Jy ceases to exist. It had a striking illustration of this during the war. In one camp the earwigs weie so plentiful that they dropped on your face while you slept, but men and animals were able to rest undisturbed by flies. In another camp the plague of flies was so great that neither men nor animals could rest, and I nevci saw there a single earwig. THE SPARROW AS A LARK. •‘Coming to more obvious recognizable pests, you have the sparrow and grey squirrel. The sparrow today is spreading so rapidly and mu - tiplying so fast that he is driving out such birds as the martin and the swallow,. which are distinctly beneficent. Only recently I captured on the Brent, near Wembley, a numbei of mosquitoes, including the malaria carrier ampheles. These the swallows would have undoubtedly have helped to keep down. Sentiment unfortunately prevails here, and any systematic attempt to reduce the nu-mbeis of sparrows is regarded as a call to arms by certain protective organisations. “Meanwhile larks are openly exposed as food for sale, though it must be admitted that many of the larks •that appear in pies would be classed by naturalists without hesitation as sparrows. In point of fact, the sparrow makes excellent eating, and there is no reason why an- additional article of diet should not oe added to the British larder simultaneously with the reduction in numbers of the acknowledged pest. “Of other threatening plagues the grey squirrel, who is nothing moie, in fact, than a climbing rat, gives every indication of so growing in numbers as to become a pest. He is voracious and destructive of young bird life, and is already ousting the little red squirrel from the woods. PESTS AND THE DOG. “It is only when one is in a position to be called upon to- give advice that one realises the ’appalling suffering caused to dumb animals by this ' lack of imagination. I was recently asked to visit a poultry farm to explain why it was that the hens would not lay As I went to pick up a bird it stae-gered and nearly fell, being nothing but feather, skin, and bone—and blood-sucking parasites. All that was necessary to restore health was to thoroughly clean and disinfect the run, the perches, and so forth, and to sprinkle the birds with insect powder. They, again, had tasted of the Inquisitors’ supreme torment. “Or to make another illustration. A dog is straining.at its chain, moaning piteously. Every now and again its mouth is foam flecked and its eyes roll as if a fit had overtaken the poor, tortured beast. Yet it is a common occurrence; it is only an animal whose lifeblood is being sucked away bp parasites. THE ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGIST. “Until public opinion is aroused to 1 the fact, that year by year a heavy 1 price is paid for the maintenance of 1 these pests, it is difficult to see how ’ they will be eliminated. Year b.v year Professor Lefroy is training students at South Kensington in ento- ’ mology, but as yet few openings are 1 available for them. Individual firms 5 pay large sums for-keeping rats, mice, ’ cockroaches, and so forth down tt ! limited numbers, but a»s a single pair 5 of rats can become a thousand in I sixteen months the task is never endi ing. The economic entomologist , should really be an officer in close

co-operation with other public health officers and should have knowledge of such practical matters as drainage, and so forth. “Science by now has show>n the means for controlling insects and other peists. The mechanical appliances are available. What is more important is that trained workers are availaole or could be made available in a very short period of time. If the nation, however, chooses to make a free gift in food of seventy-five millions a year to rats, if it likes to give similar doles to other parasites, and if it is prepared to see itis hospitals filled with cases of preventable disease, that is the affair of the nation, and the blame for the position cannot be laid at the door of the economic entomologist.”