Some Observations on Fly Breeding in Compost Trenches *Abstract of the paper communicated to and published by the Agricultural Section of the 32nd Indian Science Congress. The work was conducted under the compost scheme financed partly by the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research.

The usual two types of town wastes, viz. rubbish (katchra) and night-soil, are dealt with separately in their sanitary disposal. In most municipal towns in this province, katchra is stacked in heaps above ground, and near the outskirts of the town. Our observations have shown that it is as much a source of fly nuisance as the night-soil, but very little attention is paid to its sanitary disposal. Night-soil usually is buried in shallow or .deep trenches under a six-inch or one-foot layer of earth. It has been observed that unless this is done carefully, smell nuisance and prolific fly breeding are common features of trenching grounds. As the nightsoil by itself undergoes only a mesophylic fermentation, fly eggs and maggots, with which it is invariably infested, are not killed for lack of rise of temperature to a lethal point. These old methods of disposal could be replaced by the compost method which has proved to be of higher sanitary standard, and leads to better utilization of town wastes as manure. The agricultural value of town waste