The thorax bears the two rather broad, membranous wings ([Fig. 42]) which have characteristic venation. Three of these veins end rather close together just before the tip of the wing, the posterior one of the group being bent forward rather sharply a short distance from the tip. The stable-fly has this vein slightly curved forward but not nearly so conspicuously ([Fig. 43]).
Nearly all the other flies that are apt to be mistaken for the house-fly do not have this vein curved forward. The wings, although apparently bare, are covered with a fine microscopic pubescence. Among these fine hairs on the wing as well as among similar fine ones and coarser ones all over the body, particles of dust and dirt or filth ([Fig. 44]) or, what interests us more just now, thousands of germs may find a temporary lodgment and later be scattered through the air as the insect flies. Or they may get on our food as the fly feeds or while it rests and combs its body with the rows of coarse hairs on its legs.
The legs are rather thickly covered with coarse hairs or bristles and with a mat of fine, short hairs. On some of the segments the larger hairs are arranged in rows and are used as a sort of comb with which the fly combs the dirt from the rest of its body. The last segment ([Fig. 45]) of the leg bears at its tip a pair of large curved claws and a pair of membranous pads known as the pulvillæ. On the under side of the pulvillæ are innumerable minute secreting hairs ([Fig. 46]) by means of which the fly is able to walk on the wall or ceiling or in any position on highly-polished surfaces.
HOW THEY CARRY BACTERIA
These same little pads, with their covering of secreting hairs, are perhaps the most dangerous part of the insect for they cannot help but carry much of the filth over or through which the fly walks, and as this may be well stocked with germs the danger is at once apparent.
As the result of a series of carefully planned experiments it has been demonstrated that the number of bacteria on a single fly may range all the way from 550 to 6,600,000 with an average for the lot experimented with of about one and one-fourth million bacteria to each fly. Now where do all these bacteria come from? Necessarily from the place where the fly breeds or where it feeds.
Fig. 43—Wing of Stable-fly (Stomoxys calcitrans).