CAN THE MOSQUITO PEST BE MITIGATED? 679 



It may also happen that the significance of a foreign symbol is 

 knowingly modified, in order to adapt it to an idea or a faith pre- 

 viously destitute of all material expression or restricted to a few 

 rudimentary representations. When the Persians had possessed 

 themselves of Mesopotamia, they appropriated to themselves 

 nearly all the imagery of the conquerors, in order to give form 

 to their own religious conceptions, which the absence of a national 

 art had left without any well-defined plastic representations. So, 

 when the Christians began to reproduce on the walls of the Cata- 

 combs the scenes of the Old Testament and the parables of the 

 New, they borrowed their primary models from classical and 

 mythological art. Mercury Criophorus furnished the type of the 

 Good Shepherd. Orpheus taming the wild beasts became a sym- 

 bol of Christ and his preaching. The Christian holding to a cross 

 to overcome temptation was represented by Ulysses tied to the 

 mast of his ship, in order to resist the songs of the sirens. By an 

 ingenious application of a myth which paganism has already 

 spiritualized, Psyche offered the figure of a human soul to Love, 

 whose place was taken by an angel. The religions of Gaul and 

 India furnished examples of like assimilations from the time they 

 came in contact with the symbolism of more advanced nations. — 

 Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des 

 Deux Mondes, 



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CAN THE MOSQUITO PEST BE MITIGATED?* 



THE annoyances caused by flies and mosquitoes have invited 

 the special attention of Dr. Robert H. Lamborn, and prompted 

 him to efforts to secure such study of their life histories and of 

 their natural enemies as might lead to the discovery of some prac- 

 ticable means of mitigating their depredations. In 1889 he ad- 

 dressed a circular letter to the working entomologists of the 

 country, offering prizes for essays containing original investiga- 

 tions regarding methods of destroying these pests. He had espe- 

 cially in view the utilization of the dragon-fly — a harmless insect, 

 but at the same time exceedingly voracious and very fond of mos- 

 quitoes — and the possibility of propagating it artificially in places 

 where mosquitoes abound. The results of the correspondence he 

 had on the subject are published in this interesting book of stud- 

 ies, which, while it fails to verify the hopes which Dr. Lamborn 

 entertained respecting the dragon-flies, does not fail but is encour- 

 agingly successful in pointing out some methods of considerable 



* Dragon-Flies vs. Mosquitoes. Studies in the Life History of Irritating Insects, their 

 Natural Enemies and Artificial Checks. By Working Entomologists. With an Introduc- 

 tion by Robert H. Lamborn, Ph. D. New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1890. 



