138 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 



In the Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society, January, 1905, Mr. C. H. 

 Townsend, Director of the New York Aquarium, says : 



" The writer has had very trying experiences with mosquitoes in the Arctic 

 portions of Alaska. During the short Arctic summer the cold, moss-grown 

 morasses of that region breed mosquitoes in vast numbers, and life is almost un- 

 bearable if one is not protected against them by gloves and veils. Sleep is 

 scarcely possible against them without the protection of netting." 



In his narrative of the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899, John Burroughs, 

 writing of Port Clarence, the northernmost point reached by the expedition says : 



" And mosquitoes, how they swarmed up out of the grass upon me, when in 

 my vain effort to reach a little volcanic cone that rose up there before me like a 

 haystack in a meadow, I sat down to rest. I could not seem to get nearer the 

 haystack although I sometimes ran to get rid of the mosquitoes." 



Miall, in his excellent work entitled " The Natural History of Aquatic In- 

 sects" (London, 1895), says of northern mosquitoes (pp. 109-110) : 



" They have been found in immense numbers in uninhabited parts of Lab- 

 rador, on the tundras of Siberia and in the desolate Kerguelen Island. ' Of the 

 millions of mosquitoes which in the short Norwegian summer often thicken the 

 air of the Tromsdal — a wild valley within the Arctic Circle, practically unin- 

 habited either by man or probably by beast — how few are ever likely to taste 

 blood !,* Sir James Eoss and his men found it necessary in their polar expedi- 

 tion to wear gauze over their faces in the summer months as a defence against 

 Gnats." 



The stories which the returning gold hunters from Dawson City and other 

 Alaskan localities told of the abundance and ferocity of Alaskan mosquitoes are 

 almost beyond belief, but are vouched for by scientific men, belonging to the 

 U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, to the U. S. Geological Survey, and to the 

 Signal Service of the Army, who have come back to the United States with 

 similar and even stronger stories. An Alaskan traveler, the late W. C. Hender- 

 son, of Philadelphia, said, concerning Alaskan mosquitoes, " They existed in 

 countless millions, driving us to the verge of suicide or insanity." 



Capt. A. T. Clifton, U. S. A. (Signal Corps), who has spent much time in 

 official work in Alaska, writes as follows (in litt.) : 



" Mosquitoes in Alaska seem to be numerous and poisonous pretty much over 

 the whole countiy. They are a hardy insect apparently, as they rise out of the 

 tundra from under the patches of snow in the spring, and in my quarters in St. 

 Michael they have appeared quite lively in December when a chinook sent the 

 thermometer up above 50 degrees above zero. Like the rest of their tribe, they 

 do not like wind or smoke, though they were so fierce at St. Michael that in a 

 thirty-mile breeze clouds have fallen in behind me as I breasted the wind, 

 taking advantage of the slight protection afforded by my body to alight on my 

 back. In central Alaska in the vicinity of Fairbanks and Fort Gibbon they are 

 just as fierce and if anything much more numerous, as the country is wooded 

 and covered with bushes as well as tundra. From May to August they are at 

 their worst. 



" The only protection the prospectors, wood-choppers and Indians have is 

 from the use of smudges made of green grass, sticks and anything that will throw 



• A. D. Michael, in Natural Science, vol. 1, p. 203. 



