524 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



crops by want of cultivation. It will always mean the non-cultivation or 

 improper cultivation of thousands of acres of valuable land. It means 

 a listless activity in the world's work that counts mightily against the 

 wealth-producing power of a people. Finally, it means from two to 

 five million or more days of sickness, with all its attendant distress, 

 pain of body and mental depression to some unfortunate individuals of 

 those five states. 



While the above statistics are meager and inconclusive, and while 

 our estimates may be open to question, yet we may be sure that malaria 

 detracts enormously from the full wealth-producing power of the south. 

 To substantiate this statement one has but to reflect, from his own 

 personal knowledge, upon the number of working days that are lost 

 in a year by white men because of chills and fevers. The writer recalls 

 to mind many such cases within the year. Only the past summer I saw 

 a whole family forced to leave a farm on account of malaria. While 

 living there some one or all of them were sick the major portion of the 

 time, and although the farm was a productive one they were scarcely 

 able to make a living, because of their unfitness for work. In a certain 

 railroad town with which I am familiar it is invariably the rule that 

 some employee is 'laying off' because of chills and fever or because of 

 some indisposition at the bottom of which is malaria. 



In my summer vacation which was spent in North Carolina I had 

 an opportunity of observing a laboring man and his family that lived 

 near a brook in the quiet pools of which were the malarial mosquitoes, 

 Anopheles. During my sojourn of about three weeks the head of the 

 family 'laid off' four days from chills and fevers, and no doubt he has 

 lost many days since during the autumn. He is a man with a delicate, 

 pale skin and, while conversing with him, I have noted as many as 

 two Anopheles mosquitoes on one hand at the same time. The ques- 

 tion has often occurred to me since, whether these mosquitoes prefer 

 to attack people with delicate skin. My own face and hands were not 

 troubled by them, although we stood within hand-shaking distance of 

 each other and the mosquitoes were fairly abundant. The mother and 

 children of the family were great sufferers from malaria, especially the 

 former, on account of which much of their earnings was used to pay 

 doctor's fees. 



In looking for a concrete effect of malaria upon agriculture, we 

 have only to turn our attention to one of the most fertile regions of the 

 United States if not of the world, namely, the so-called Delta region 

 of Mississippi. It lies along the Mississippi Eiver in the western part 

 of the state and extends from the mouth of the Yazoo Eiver north, 

 nearly to the Tennessee line. It is the second best farming land in 

 the world, having only one rival, and that is the valley of the Nile. 

 Still this land to-day, at least much of it, can be bought at ten to 



