48 The Book of Bugs. 



method before described. In the next mail he got two 

 letters warning him that if he ever set foot in that place 

 again he would be mobbed. 



Up to a very recent date indeed, practically about the 

 time we got control of Havana, anyone making any serious 

 effort to kill off mosquitoes must have seemed to most of 

 us somewhat fussirkd. A body oughtn't to mind a little 

 thing like a mosquito bite. And yet before we knew as 

 much as we do now about the evil effects of mosquitoes, 

 there were many well-authenticated cases where they had 

 induced acute mania. 



H. Stewart, of North Carolina, who explored the Lake 

 Superior region in 1866, narrates that one of the party 

 suffered so from the bites of mosquitoes that he became 

 violently insane, and ran off into the woods and was never 

 found again. Another man went crazy from the pain 

 and loss of sleep, and in a frenzy of terror also escaped 

 into the woods. He was captured after a fierce struggle 

 and recovered when he was put under restraint for a few 

 days. He was so affected by the poison, though, that he 

 had to be sent home. Fever, pains in the limbs, and other 

 unpleasant symptoms, attended even the men that suffered 

 least. 



Obviously, the reply of those who do not believe in 

 bothering about things that nobody bothered about when 

 they were young would be: "Oh, well! that might be 

 where they were very thick, but we don't have many of 

 'em around here, only a few when the wind blows 'em 

 over from the .South Side.' A eood many very old 



<_> - 



people will not have nettings up at the windows. They 

 say they don't believe in straining the air, and they say 

 it with such a confident manner, as if, after that rap, you 

 would never dare lift your head again. Of course it 

 doesn't matter much, but I am sort of interested ill 



