X¢cil PROCEEDINGS. 
Now came the day of glory for the fly-catcher who with his net 
used to frequent the town pump, a harmless man supposed to have a 
bee in his bonnet as well as a mosquito in his net. But from over all 
the world except Nova Scotia and some other provinces, these fly- 
catchers reported the species native to the country, so that the malar- 
ial regions of the world were soon proven to be coterminous with the 
range of certain species. The unproductive knowledge which had been 
growing for twenty years and more, now suddenly became productive 
with a fruition of life and health and wealth to the world. 
But the end of the work of these for-so-many-years unproductive 
toilers with the microscope and the insignificant flies did not yet cease. 
A species of Culex, harmless from a malarial point of view, has been 
proven only this year to have been the unsuspected, but sneaking and 
most gigantic murder of tropical America. As Danelewsky’s discovery 
could not have been made without Laveran’s, and as Ross’ discovery 
could not have been made without Danelewsky’s, so Sternberg and 
Reed’s could not have been made without Ross’. 
YELLOW FEVER OBJECT LESSON. 
Before Laveran, in 1880, demonstrated the presence of the jelly- 
speck parasite in malarial blood, the blood of the victim of the terrible 
Yellow Fever plague was being examined ; but the microscope was 
able to show nothing which could be proved to be the cause of the 
disease. . From the range of the fever and its retreat before cold 
weather, some species of musquito were suspected, and were experi- 
mented with ; but the result for over twenty years was still negative. 
Dr. Carlos Finlay, in Havana, from 1881 to 1893, had no less than 
eighty-eight human subjects bitten by mosquitoes which had fed a few 
days previously on Yellow Fever patients from the second to the sixth 
day of the disease. But the results were so doubtful as to be negative, 
for only one case developed into a slight attack, while thirteen were 
attacks of acclimatization fever, generally at too long and irregular 
intervals to be deemed due to the inoculation. We now know why 
Finlay came within an ace of the discovery, but was still so far from 
it. There was a peculiarity in the facts which he never suspected, for 
it was not suggested by the cognate previous discoveries. Nature does 
not work in accordance with our preconceptions. It has its own 
habits, which we must discover, and we may guess a thousand times 
