426 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMEEICA 



W. J. Matlieson, speaking before the First Anti-Mosquito Convention in New 

 York, December 16, 1903, concluded that the work carried on had demonstrated 

 that, with the exception of the salt-marsh mosquitoes, the mosquito nuisance 

 can be controlled and abated in almost any locality where intelligent cooperation 

 can be secured and a systematic inspection made of the premises for the purpose 

 of destroying the breeding-places. Extermination, in his opinion, will ex- 

 terminate just as far as the intelligent land owner is willing to carry it, but 

 that it can not be done once and for all any more than weeding a garden or the 

 cropping of a lawn can be done once and for all. He concludes his paper with 

 the following words : 



" So far as ray experience goes, it has been demonstrated that mosquitoes can 

 be as completely exterminated in any locality as dirt can be swept from a build- 

 ing, or as weeds from a walk, with the possible exception of the Culex Sollicitans, 

 and with the exercise of no more intelligence and much less labor than is required 

 in the perfonnance of many domestic duties. My experience would lead me to 

 conclude that if mosquitoes continue to exist in any locality, it is because the 

 people are too indifferent to the annoyance to take the trouble to be rid of it." 



THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERESTING CHILDREN. 



Under the general head of "^ Eemedies " we have mentioned the efforts made 

 by Professor Hodge, in Worcester, Massachusetts, to interest the school children 

 of the city in the search for mosquito breeding-places. This must have been in 

 1901-2. But, the most serious and productive effort seems to have been made at 

 San Antonio, Texas, a year or so later, at the initiative of Dr. J. S. Lankford, 

 of that city. 



In November, 1903, there were a few cases of yellow fever in San Antonio 

 which caused several deaths, and a consequent interruption of commerce that 

 cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the effort to allay the panic, the 

 existence of yellow fever was denied, not only by persons having business in- 

 terests in the city, but by many medical men as well. Very many adults not 

 only denied the existence of the fever in the city, but denied the relation between 

 the mosquitoes and the fever. Perhaps the majority of the adults seemed too 

 old to learn; and to the enlightened physicians it appeared impossible to begin 

 education at the wrong end of life. 



The Chairman of the Sanitary Committee of the School Board (Doctor Lank- 

 ford) grasped the happy idea that if the children were properly educated, sani- 

 tary matters in the future would be much better attended to. He suggested to 

 the Board that it would be valuable to educate all of the school children of the 

 city in prophylaxis and make sanitarians out of them all. The School Board 

 heartily approved of the proposition, and the campaign was at once begun to 

 educate the children on the subject of insects as disease carriers. The best 

 recent literature on the subject was procured and furnished to the teachers, 

 and a circular letter was sent to them outlining a proposed course and offering a 

 cash prize for the best model lesson on the subject. Teachers became deeply 

 interested. A crude aquarium, with mosquito eggs and larvae was kept in 

 every school room, where the pupils could watch them develop ; and large 



