ASSOCIATION WITH MAN 223 



" In small compounds of the poorer natives, where one or two huts were 

 present, no breeding-places were found. These natives had no discarded bottles, 

 etc., in which water could collect, nor were wells or tubs or any article for the 

 storage of water present, sufficient water for the day being drawn from one of 

 the public wells. These compounds were exceedingly clean and tidy, and no 

 mosquitoes were found breeding in them. Excepting these, breeding-places 

 were found and increased in extent and number in proportion to the wealth and 

 position of the occupier of the compound, reaching a maximum on the premises 

 of the larger traders (natives and white), where innumerable facilities for the 

 development of mosquitoes were afforded. These breeding places included all 

 those domestic articles which are capable of containing a small quantity of 

 water after showers lasting over a week without being dried up, or are not dried 

 up between the frequent showers in the wet season. Such articles found were 

 broken bottles, either stuck on a wall or scattered over the compounds, iron pots, 

 old calabashes, tin-lined packing cases, cocoanut husks, fowl troughs, and old 

 tins of all sorts. There was found an extraordinary amount of such-like rubbish 

 in some of the factory compounds, the more specialized breeding-places included 

 tubs, used for the storage of rain-water or as wash tubs for bottles, or in which 

 water was placed for the preservation of the tub. Large barrels in which fibres 

 were soaked, garden tubs in which water was stored for gardening purposes, 

 old iron boilers for the collection of rain-water, improperly covered rain-tanks 

 formed other breeding-places. In some of the factories a small gutter six inches 

 across by four feet deep is let into the cemented floor of the yard around the 

 gi'ound-nut store house. This gutter is kept full of water to prevent the en- 

 trance of the ground-nut insect into the store. These gutters swarmed with 

 mosquito larvae. In some yards a small channel runs down the centre to drain 

 off rain water, and is generally covered over with a board. It was found that 

 some of these had become clogged up at intervals with sand and rubbish, so that 

 small pools of water collected along their course; these pools acted as breeding- 

 places for mosquitoes. An account of an examination of one of the larger Euro- 

 pean factories will illustrate to what extent mosquitoes are bred by the white 

 man in the tropics on his own premises. In the factory yard were six barrels 

 containing water, in some the water was very foul ; in the garden were seventeen 

 tubs containing water for gardening purposes, and besides this number of tubs 

 there were eight wells, all uncovered. In all these articles mosquito larvae were 

 present ; in the barrels in the yard the water swarmed with Culex and Stegomyia 

 larvae, and in the wells and tubs in the garden the larvae of Anopheles and Culex 

 were found in all of them in good numbers. Besides these breeding-places there 

 were many domestic articles scattered about in odd corners of the yard, which in 

 the wet season would also have acted as breeding-places. 



" It was observed that larvae of A. costalis were frequently found in rain-tubs 

 and smaller articles containing water. Though many of these larvae may have 

 been originally transferred to some of these articles along with the water drawn 

 from the well, yet the occurrence of batches of larvae of the same age and in fair 

 numbers would tend to show that this species of mosquito avails itself of these 

 small collections of water in which to breed. 



Stegomyia fasciata, in tubs and old bottles, etc. 



Culex fatigans, " " and especially when the water was foul 



A. costalis, tubs and barrels 



Culex duttoni 



Culex Jiirsutipalpis 



Stegomyia pagens (rare), in ground-nut gutters. 



" The wash-tubs, garden-tubs, wells, and rain-barrels occurring in compounds 

 form the chief source of mosquito in Bathurst for at least six months of the dry 



