INSECT PESTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1940, Page 8

INSECT PESTS

ADDRESS AT ROYAL SANITARY INSTITUTE. Dr D. Miller of the Cawthron Institute. speaking at the annual conference of the New Zealand branch of the Royal Sanitary Institute regarding insect life, said that since Manson’s discovery of insect-borne disease in 1878 investigation had proved that 200 different diseases were conveyed by insects. In the animal kingdom insects composed by far the largest group. Twenty-eight per cent of New Zealand insects were natives, the remainder having been, imported by some way or another at different times. The speaker dealt with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Elephantiasis and other tropical diseases, and getting nearer home, mosquito control, sand flies,, fleas, blow flies, stable flies, bot flies, house flies (the ordinary and lesser) and bugs. He advocated the use of agricultural salt in the control of fleas on the ground and acetic acid as a good deterent of bugs. Two cases of the lesser house fly larvae having gained access, one to a woman's lungs, and the other to the digestive tract were mentioned in a most interesting discussion which followed the lecture. Excellent slides were shown of termites and their ravages on timber, and unfortunately these pests were establishing themselves in New Zealand and might yet be a serious problem in this land of wooden houses.