The Way of the Mosquito. 49 



the mental process that is satisfied with that conclusion. 

 It puzzles me. I declare I can't see for the life of me 

 what there is that is so smart about it, and yet to hear 

 them get it off you 



-j - 



would think it ended the 

 whole matter. 



\Yhen you come t o 

 look over the problem 

 of malaria in the light of 

 recent discovery, it 

 seems strange we did 

 not sooner find out its 

 intimate connection with 

 mosquitoes. People 

 used to say of a place : 



There ought not to be 

 any malaria there. It is 

 good high ground, fine 

 natural drainage, and far 

 from any swamps." I 

 lived for a while on the Park Slope in Brooklyn. It was 

 good high ground, far from swamps, and after a heavy 

 rain-storm, if you had tried to cross the street and had 

 waded through the torrents at the gutters, not being able 

 to jump across, you would have been convinced that the 

 natural drainage was excellent. The nearer one got to 

 the Park, the higher the ground and also the higher the 

 percentage of malaria, to say nothing of the rent. The 

 high rent was easy enough to account for, but how about 

 the high percentage of malaria? Now it is plain enough, 

 for the Park swarmed with mosquitoes. Ordinarily, mos- 

 quitoes are scarce on high, well-drained land, far from 

 swamps. \Ye used to think that the reason why the 

 pioneers that opened up Ohio and Indiana had " fever 'n 



Fig. 10. Anopheles piinctipenuis, the 

 malarial mosquito, female ; with male 

 antenna on right ; and wing tips, show- 

 ing venation, on left. 



