22, THE FLORIDA ENTOMOLOGIST 
Finding the aquatic plants, especially water lettuce, excel- 
lent food for chickens and stock, and also of great value as fer- 
tilizer, they contained small water animals making its phos- 
phorus value high, the cost of keeping this down was not esti- 
mated. It would not be fair to charge stock food and fertilizer 
to the mosquito. 
From the nature of things, the removal of hiding places for 
the mosquito, especially weeds, is not a job that is finished and 
done with, it is one of any farmer’s constant tasks anywhere. 
This day after day job keeps down materially the number of 
the places where the mosquito can hide and be more or less 
safe. 
The potential breeding places of the pest were destroyed 
where possible (tin cans, very small puddles, etc.). Wells and 
mud puddles were stocked with the hardy cat fish. Larger iso- 
lated ponds were stocked with the top minnow. One large pond 
and many isolated marsh puddles were connected with one an- 
other and the lake by ditches, too shallow for the large fish 
that eat the top minnows to negotiate, and denied to the young 
predaceous fish by one half inch hardware cloth. These ditches 
make excellent breeding places for the top minnow, and from 
them are obtained not only stock for outlaying ponds, but the 
constant migration, due to over population of minnows, into the 
spring and stream, keeps them filled with sufficient minnows to 
satisfy the larger fish and still leaves a margin sufficient to 
cope with the mosquitoes hatched there; this in spite of the 
large amount of water plants present. Another fish preferred 
to the top minnow by the larger fish and much sought after for 
bait was protected from the fisherman, and multiplied rapidly. 
Fishing birds were shot when caught near these breeding places. 
Other ponds within a radius of a mile were stocked with top 
minnows. Breeding sanctuaries (smaller models of the hum- 
mock marsh ditches) for the top minnow were built for the 
nearer and larger of these. 
Our top minnows cost us nothing. The ditching cost less than 
fifty dollars. In this way the breeding places were made very 
unsafe for the young mosquito. The number of top minnows 
in a fish filled pond is usually small, and they are to be found 
only in the shallow places and hiding among the plants. Natu- 
rally quite a few mosquitoes escape and reach the flying stage. 
My plan, however, results differently. Not only is there a 
constantly arriving fresh supply of top minnows, but the larger 
