CONVINCING THE PUBLIC 423 



The mosquito being not only a serious annoyance, but a constant menace to 

 health, its extermination becomes a matter of public concern. 



The cooperation of every household is requested. 



Please report to the location of any pools of stagnant water in 



your neighborhood. 



After the issuing of the circular or the holding of the public lecture, or both, 

 if the members of the committee are too busy, as they are likely to be, to engage 

 to any extent in the actual superintending work, an intelligent superintendent 

 must be chosen, who will familiarize himself with the biology of mosquitoes and 

 especially with the character of mosquito breeding-places in general. He should 

 at once be put to work upon a survey of the mosquito topography of the neighbor- 

 hood. It will be well for him to make a map upon which every breeding-place, 

 aside from the chance receptacles about houses, should be noted with the greatest 

 accuracy and care. Every house having an uncovered water tank or having 

 rain-water barrels should also be noted, and for each locality the most effective 

 as well as the most economical remedy should be recorded. If these remedies 

 demand any large-scale work estimates of the necessary expenditures should be 

 indicated. 



Such a careful report and map having been prepared and placed in the hands 

 of the committee, the amount of funds necessary can readily be estimated, and 

 the expenditure of such sums as it is found possible to raise can be considered and 

 agreed upon. The work can then be easily carried on through the summer under 

 the direction of this superintendent, and of course the amount of the expenditure 

 and the number of employees will depend entirely upon the local mosquito-breed- 

 ing possibilities. 



Some small communities will find that a full understanding of the problem 

 on the part of individual householders will bring about great relief as the result 

 of individual work, and that the only organization necessary will be perhaps the 

 signing of a pledge by individuals to take care of their own premises. In other 

 communities the matter will be a little more serious, but there will be some where 

 the employment of a single man for two or three days a week throughout the 

 summer will result in freedom from mosquitoes. Again, however, in larger 

 communities the enforcement of municipal regulations will be found to be neces- 

 sary before a desirable result can be obtained, and where the village is built upon 

 swampy land or is surrounded by swamps the expenditure of considerable sums 

 of money will be found to be imperative. 



In every community, however, there will pretty surely be ultra-conservative, 

 recalcitrant and ignorant citizens — people who will not take the trouble to pre- 

 vent the breeding of mosquitoes on their own premises — people in fact who will 

 violently object to the entrance on their premises of an individual who 'will do 

 the work for them. Such cases are not numerous, but they are always difficult 

 to handle, and, in the absence of municipal action, moral suasion must be tried 

 in the most ingenious ways which the committee can devise. Sir Eonald Eoss, 

 in his excellent work " Mosquito Brigades," in writing of such persons, puts it 

 very happily in the following words : 



