222 GNATS OK MOSQUITOES — CHAPTER VIII 



themselves. One pastille should be allowed for every 

 thousand cubic feet of space. Merely for the sake of per- 

 sonal comfort, it is well worth while occasionally burning 

 these pastilles in the hot season in bath-rooms and other 

 favourite lurking places, as to do so costs but little either 

 in cash or trouble, and the smell of the fumes disappears 

 as soon as the place has been aired ; but it is absolutely 

 useless to do so if active breeding places are allowed to exist 

 close by. To be effectual, fumigating should be done towards 

 the close of the hybernating season, and should be performed 

 during the heat of the day, when even the least sluggish 

 are sure to be under shelter. I trust that no playful critic 

 will indulge us with an arithmetical dissertation on the 

 number of tons of sulphur required for the annual fumi- 

 gation of every native home in India, on the gratuitous 

 assumption that I propose to enforce some such measure 

 at the point of the bayonet, for rudimentary statistical 

 exercises of this sort are within the powers of the most 

 modest mathematician, and it is needless to say that every- 

 one who has served in the sanitary department in India 

 knows far better than any others that it is quite useless to 

 try to force or even persuade the native to adopt sanitary 

 precautions of any sort within the precincts of his own 

 house. The caution is hardly needless, as, if I remember 

 rightly, some wit went to the pains of calculating the annual 

 enhancement of taxation per household necessary to provide 

 all native babies with a mosquito net, on no better grounds 

 than because some one of us had been emphasising the 

 importance of Europeans protecting themselves by their use. 

 But though we cannot fumigate the Indian continent, there 

 is no reason why the plan should not be adopted in the case 

 of all barracks and other quarters provided by Government, 

 and in cantonments where such natives as are permitted to 

 reside within their limits, do so on the distinct understanding 

 that their status is more or less one of sufferance, and on 

 the understanding that they are willing to submit to the 

 sanitary whims of those for whose use the area has been 

 set aside, however unreasonable they may appear to people 

 in their particular stage of civilisation ; it would be not 



