But the real devouring beast of prey who, with his
cousin, the mosquito, has slain more human beings
than all the wolves and lions and tigers and snakes put



228 CIVILIZATION AND HEALTH

together, is the little, harmless, buzzing fly upon the
window pane.
His familiar trail of specks is the real Handwriting
on the Wall foretelling pestilence and death. He is the
real viper whom we have cherished in the bosom of our
family; bred and sheltered and nourished him to bite
the hand that fed him.
That is why we hate him so. Our instincts are as-
tonishingly sound and right at bottom. Weak-headed
sentimentalists have urged us to spare him, and idiotic-
ally exalted unwillingness to "hurt a fly" to the very
pinnacle of the virtues; but unregenerate human na-
ture, in its heart of hearts, knows better and "swats"
him with a ferociousness and vindictive joy every
chance it gets.
Keep it up; organize your instincts into a campaign
of extermination; treat the fly according to the policy
of Custer, "One more Indian war, and then no more
Indians."

Three fourths of the colics, the typhoids, the sum-
mer diarrheas and the sicknesses which we attribute to
the summer heat, generally including even most cases
of sunstroke, are due to the poisons spread by that
busy bastard, sired by Summer Heat out of Human
Dirt, the housefly.
