The Way of the Mosquito. 43 



that used to infest the rainwater barrel at the corner of 

 the house " in the airly days." 



Thewiggler has two stages of existence, larva and pupa. 

 For seven days it has hard work to get up to the surface 

 to breathe, but when it changes, it has hard work to get 

 down to the bottom. Two days later its clothes begin to 

 feel tight, and when all the back buttons burst off, it 

 crawls out, using its old frock as a kind of boat, while it 

 gets its wings straightened out. This is a very ticklish 

 job, and many a young life has been lost by drowning at 

 the very beginning of a promising career. The fact that 

 so many eggs are laid would indicate, if nothing else did, 

 that many mischances await the mosquito at all stages 

 of its existence. 



One of the most sovereign remedies for the plague is 

 to introduce small fish into the breeding places. In the 

 Riviera, where drinking-water is a precious thing, they put 

 carp in the tanks. The little stickleback is the best for this 

 climate in shallow waters. C. H. Russell, of Bridgeport, 

 Conn., noticed that of two little ponds left by an unusu- 

 ally high tide at Stratford,, the one in which there were 

 a few small fish was free from wigglers, but the other, 

 which swarmed with them, had no fish at all in it. A 

 touching story from Beeville, Texas, tells of the devotion 

 of the people there to a fish, insufficiently described as " a 

 little perch " (as if anybody could tell what that meant )- 

 that eats up mosquito larvae, and so helps to make happy 

 homes in the great Southwest. But there are not enough 

 wigglers to make it worth the while of the little perch to 

 continue the business, so the inhabitants use a particular 

 form of flytrap that collects that household nuisance alive. 

 When they get about a quart or so they take the collection 

 down to the river and there make an offering to the little 

 perch. This may seem a hard saying to many. Yet 



