198 



CoAD (B. E..). Oviposition habits of Cnlex abominator, Dyar and 

 Knab. — The Canadian Entomologist, London, Out., August 

 1913, pp. 265-266, 1 fig. 



Beds of Ceratophylhivi, Potamogeton, Lemna and similar 

 aquatic plants, which frequently form in the rivers and lakes of 

 the north-central States, are more or less impervious to fish, but 

 provide enough open water to allow the breeding of mosquitos, 

 Culea; abominator, which is unique in this respect, lays large 

 masses of very black eggs firmly attached to the plant and to 

 each other by their truncate base, near the margin on the upper 

 surface of Lemna fronds, whence it is easy for the hatched larvae 

 to wriggle into the water. This was observed at Havana, and the 

 author believes that the fact has not been notified before. No 

 other plants were resorted to except in one case, in which the edge 

 of a Potamogeton leaf was used. 



MouzELS (P.). La Fievre recurrente au Tonkin. [Recurrent Fever 

 in Tongking.] — Ann, Hyg. et Med. Coloniales, Paris, xvi, 

 no. 2, pp. 249-282. 



The epidemic of recurrent fever which attacked Hanoi in 190T-8 

 has been mistakenly attributed, the author believes, to coolies 

 from Yunnan, supposed to have contracted the disease from 

 Pe-chi-li Chinese working with them on a railway station ; for the 

 fever was known in Annam at least as early as 1889, when a 

 number of natives preparing for the Exhibition in Paris were 

 found to have brought it with them. Although ticks, lice, bugs, 

 fleas and mosquitos are all capable of carrying live spirilla for a 

 considerable time, ticks are locally so rare as to be wholly out 

 of proportion to the incidence of the disease; again, there were 

 neither bugs nor fleas that could, during five years, be rendered 

 responsible for the intramural infection in the native hospital; 

 and there were neither lice nor bugs to cause the epidemic raging 

 in the house of a well-to-do Annamese. In both cases mosquitos 

 had access to the patients, who, in the hospital, were not free from 

 lice, while those in the private house may have been bitten by the 

 numerous fleas infesting the eight cats kept there. Dogs and 

 monkeys, as well as human beings, can be inoculated with the 

 fever, but the question whether these or other animals keep the 

 disease in existence in the intervals between epidemics, or in 

 what manner it survives them, is still unsolved. The author 

 foresees some trouble in getting the Annamese to cut their lice- 

 infested hair, to rid their huts of fleas and bugs, and to destroy 

 all the breeding places of mosquitos. It may be less difficult to 

 prevent the fever-striken from carrying the disease about from 

 place to place, by isolating them several hundred j-ards away from 

 their villages, cutting and burning their hair, disinfecting their 

 clothes and preventing mosquitos from having access to them. 

 Sterilisation can also be affected by injecting " 606,'' which, 

 besides its ciirative effect, almost immediately eliminates the 

 germs and renders the patient non-infectious. 



