330 Fiftieth Report on the State Museum 



edge, he may not be able, in all cases, to assign the purposes for which it 

 was made. 



Do not misunderstand me. I do not object to the destruction of 

 noxious animals when our lives are endangered by them, nor to a very 

 great reduction — even to the extreme extent of our ability — of the 

 overwhelming numbers in which some of our insect enemies present 

 themselves, depriving us of comfort, withholding from us luxuries, and 

 robbing us of material wealth and at times of the necessities of life. To 

 such a reduction, my studies and labors as you know, are being con- 

 stantly directed. But it is only against excessive numbers that the 

 economic entomologist contends — an excess that did not exist when iirst 

 " God saw that all was good" — which could not exist under the opera- 

 tions alone of the laws of nature, but which do exist as the result of 

 the unnatural, excessive, and often improper demands of our present 

 form of civilizition and society. Briefly, it is right and proper to restrain ; 

 it would be wrong, we think, had we the power to utterly exterminate. 



But to return to the question. We do know one purpose which the 

 mosquito serves, and one of considerable importance in a sanitary point 

 of view. It serves to purify standing waters and to a great extent to 

 lessen their malarial influences. The natural habitat of the larval mos- 

 quito is the stagnant water of our miasm itic s. vamps. The entire food 

 of the creature from its birth to its maturity is believed to consist of the 

 decaying vegetable matter which is here found in abundance, together 

 with other impurities which it draws from such waters. Its agency in 

 the purification of standing water may be easily shown. If during the 

 summer months two barrels of rain-water be placed side by side — the 

 one open to the atmosphere and the other covered with a thin netting, 

 the following result will be obtained : The open one, after a few days has 

 elapsed, will be found to abound with the larvae and the pupae of the 

 mosquito, and its water sweet ; the other, the netting of which prevented 

 the visits of the mosquitoes for the deposit of their eggs, and conse- 

 quently without larvae, will have become foul and offensive. 



We need not refer to an important role which the insect in its super- 

 abundance plays, as food for fishes, since that is but in accordance with 

 a seemingly universal rule controlling all of the lower orders of animated 

 nature, viz., " eat and be eaten." 



In view of this general law, seemingly fraught with so much sufferings 

 how fortunate it is, we may remark incidentally, that many of the lower 

 orders which are doomed to a jjerpetual sacrifice to the Moloch, appe- 

 tite — insects, for example — have organisms so constituted that thjey are 



