46 The Book of Bugs. 



see it? Well, of all the stu- Can't you see it? There 

 it goes. Well, it was a mosquito. My, my ! that's the 

 first one in let me see. Why, I guess it was the summer 

 before Willie was born. How old is he now?' 



Alas ! I fear I shall not live to see that day. Not 

 because there is no universal extirpation method. There 

 is, and it is very simple. Where it is not desirable to drain 

 off the marshes in which the mosquitoes breed, or to stock 

 the pools with fish, a little kerosene on the water will not 

 only kill all the wigglers when they come up to breathe, 

 but all tJic females before they lay their eggs. This last 

 statement has more of the rainbow of hope in it, especially 

 to suburbanites, than any other ever propounded to the 

 human race. One ounce of the cheapest kerosene will 

 cover fifteen square feet of water so as to be a perfect 

 insecticide for all aquatic bugs. One barrel will cover 

 ninety-six thousand square feet in the same effectual 

 manner. 



It should be remembered that the lady mosquito is not 

 pickish or hard to please about the size or permanency 

 of the pool on which she lays her eggs. Any transient 

 puddle, or any place where water will stand for a week, 

 will bring forth enough of the torments to keep a neigh- 

 borhood unhappy. Old stumps bottles, empty fruit-cans, 

 rain-water barrels, tanks, unused wells, or cesspools, all 

 these she can be trusted to find out and put to what seems 

 to her to be a good use. 



L. O. Howard, entomologist of the Department of 

 Agriculture, was about the first person to apply the treat- 

 ment and record his observations. He tried it on a pool 

 whose sixty square feet of surface teemed w r ith insect life. 

 After the oil had been applied, he counted 7400 dead 

 aquatic insects, 370 of which were mosquitoes. In a 

 certain New Jersey town they are a little touchy on the 



