How Far Mosquitoes Fly 47 



swarms of the marsh mosquitoes will appear after 

 several days of a light, steady, east wind, practically 

 a sea-breeze. Mrs. C. B. Aaron believes that, during 

 the stiff sea-breezes, the insects hide in the thick 

 grass or wind-flattened tree-tops of the sand dunes, 

 and that during the lull, when the wind veers, they 

 come out. This is why they present themselves at 

 such an extremely short interval after the cessation 

 of the sea-breeze, and such appearance would be 

 impossible if all the mosquitoes were blown far 

 inland. In this case the houses are but a few rods 

 away, not, as in the case of Dr. Stiles's cottage, one- 

 third of a mile from the woods. 



As to the height to which the insect will go, Mr. 

 C. A. Sperry, of Chicago, says that they are seldom, 

 if ever, seen as high as the third floor in the city. 

 Dr. Smith, on the contrary, states that he has actu- 

 ally seen them coming in at the fourth- and fifth- 

 story windows in cities. The writer has noted that 

 when mosquitoes were biting on the first and second 

 floors there were none on the fourth ; this was during 

 a very light breeze. A fair breeze kept them from 

 the second-floor gallery when they were biting 

 maliciously on the first. In an article by Mr. Knab 

 he quotes Swinton, in 1766, as speaking of six 

 columns of "gnats" "ascending from the tops of 

 six boughs of an apple tree ... to the height 

 of at least fifty or sixty feet," and also speaks of a 

 swarm which was observed around the cross on the 

 steeple of St. Mary's Church, in Neubrandenburg, at 

 a height of three hundred feet, on the afternoon of 

 August 20, 1859. 



