IMALARIA — WATSON 



345 



waters of the valley. Today there are some 5,000 miles of these hedges 

 in India, 



There are in India some 40 species of anopheles, only a few of which 

 carry malaria. A. phiUppinensis causes devastating malaria in Bengal 

 in areas protected from river floods by embankments, but is impotent 

 where the land is submerged each year by floods. The devastation and 

 depopulation resulting from man's efforts to control the rivers must 

 be seen to be believed : hundreds of thousands of acres in jungle and 

 a million lives lost. In the Punjab A. culici fades produces great epi- 

 demics. Fortunately the last bad one was in 1908. 



"■^, 





FiQUKE 2. — Area where A. minimus is barmful in tlie foothills. 



Of the great work in improving the health of their laborers and 

 European staff's carried out on tea, rubber, jute, and the mining indus- 

 tries in India a brief but interesting account will be found in the last 

 Annual Report of Committee of Control of the India Branch of the 

 Ross Institute (Calcutta, July 1941). Extensive work in the preven- 

 tion of malaria is now being carried out by the Imperial and Provin- 

 cial Governments in India, both in towns and villages ; I know of no 

 country which in the last decade has done more brilliant scientific 

 and practical work in preventing malaria than India. 



Before leaving Asia for Africa" we might just glance at malaria in 

 Ceylon. There was once a great civilization in Ceylon, which was 

 destroyed by war some 800 years ago. Tlie Indians came to the island 



