214 MOSQUITO ERADICATION 



understood that it is of value only in ridding the area of a brood 

 of mosquitoes that has settled there and is useless if new broods 

 are continually emerging from nearby breeding-places. It 

 must, therefore, be used in connection with the other standard 

 methods already described. 



FURTHER PROTECTIVE MEASURES 



When the offensive measures against the mosquito fail to bring 

 the desired result, defensive or protective measures may be 

 brought into play. In addition to screening, there are, as already 

 intimated in a previous section of this chapter, several other 

 more or less valuable protective measures that may be used 

 to repel the mosquito or to avert some of the consequences of its 

 attack. 



One of the most interesting and suggestive of these is the use of 

 animals as a living shield between mosquito production areas and 

 human dwelling-places. This measure arose from the observation 

 that mosquitoes frequently are more numerous in stables, etc., 

 than in adjoining dwellings. 



Rizzi 1 records several interesting observations on the subject, 

 made in the vicinity of Trinitapoli, Italy, a well-known center of 

 malaria, which may be summarized as follows: 



USE OF ANIMALS AS A PROTECTION AGAINST MOSQUITOES 



1. In a locality usually non-malarious, a stable was found to 

 abound with Anopheles mosquitoes. Careful search led to 

 discovery of the breeding-place, a small basin of water still 

 containing larvae. Rizzi holds that the mosquitoes did not 

 invade surrounding areas, owing to the fact that the single beast 

 in the stable supplied them with sufficient blood. 



2. In a village frequently attacked by malaria, only a few 

 mosquitoes were found; they were abundant, however, in two 

 large stables, each about 1,500 feet from the outlying parts of 

 town. No larvae were found in neighboring ponds, although 

 some had been found in the spring. Rizzi believes that in this 

 case, the mosquitoes were attracted to the stables, which, in this 

 way, protected the village from invasion. 



1 Nuovo Indirizzo di Profilassi Anti-malarica, Ann. d'Igiene, Nov. 30, 

 1919. Compiled from "Public Health Engineering Abstracts," U. S. 

 Public Health Service, July, 2, 1921. 



