A bedbug bite usually appears as a raised blister with a red spot in the center. It itches and sometimes has a burning sensation. Bedbugs do not live on the human body but they do infest beds, bedding, upholstered furniture, walls, woodwork, and draperies. They usually come out at night, drawn by the odor of the human body. When crushed, the bedbug gives off a foul odor.

Because the bedbug bite itches, the bitten area may be masked by the results of scratching and secondary infection. The spots most commonly bitten are the parts not covered by the night clothing. People who wear pajamas, if bitten, are usually affected in the areas around the ankles, the wrists, and the neck. Sometimes the spots are found in a line, as the bedbug feeds along its way. The only treatment usually required for a bedbug bite is application of a lotion of calamine, with menthol or phenol or camphor to relieve the itching. Ordinary rubbing alcohol or wet dressings of boric acid may be applied.

Flies are not as frequent an annoyance as they used to be. Cleaning-up of surroundings, the use of flypaper and fly swatters and the various insect repellents are serving to eliminate them. Such flies as the common housefly, stable flies, greenbottle flies, bluebottle flies, blowflies, fruit flies, and others feed on contaminated garbage, and may spread viruses and germs.

Such filth-feeding flies have been incriminated in the spread of epidemics of typhoid, dysentery, diarrhea, cholera, infectious hepatitis, and other diseases.

A female housefly can lay as many as 2000 eggs during a lifetime—i.e., the fly’s lifetime. In warm weather these eggs hatch in from eight to ten hours and the new flies go right on breeding.

Here are some simple recommendations for getting rid of filth-feeding flies:

The lungfish has small gills, but must have access to air or it drowns. About once every twenty minutes it comes to the surface to swallow a gulp of air, passing the gas into a pair of air bladders or lungs that open into the gullet. Among the many other unusual features of structure found in the lungfish are a pair of nostrils that open from the exterior into the mouth; in this respect lungfish differ from almost all other kinds of fishes. The lungfish has a long body with long dorsal and anal fins that seem to come together in a sharp point to form the tail. The pectoral and pelvic fins are merely long, tapering ribbons. Scales are small and completely embedded in the skin. In color it is brown or tan with black or dark brown mottling.