watering pots, garden or house vases, broken crockery and glassware, 

 water troughs, ornamental water gardens and pools containing stagnant 

 water. The farmer should therefore strive not to leave any kind of 

 receptacle lying about in which rain water may accumulate. A single tin 

 can or an earthen jar with standing water may > breed scores of mosquitoes. 

 The roof gutters should not be overlooked in the inspection, for if they 

 are not properly pitched, or have sagged at a point away from the outlet, 

 or if obstructed at the connection with the leader, they will hold stagnant 

 water, which will attract the female mosquito. 



All receptacles in or about a house holding water should be either 

 removed, emptied or screened. Roof tanks, rain-water barrels, under- 

 ground cisterns, sewage tanks and cesspools, also drainage catchbasins of 

 all kinds are often found to be breeding places, and hence they should be 

 covered and protected with wire or cotton gauze screens. Cisterns may 

 also be treated with oil or kerosene. The water in watering troughs, and 

 that placed in chicken coops and dog kennels, should be changed daily. 



Wet places and pools which can neither be permanently drained nor 

 filled in may be treated by pouring or spraying over them some common 

 kerosene oil. The oil interferes with the breathing of the larvae, and thus 

 suffocates them. The odor of the oil is also abhorred by the fully 

 developed mosquito. This method of treatment applies of course only to 

 still water, and would be inefficient for running brooks. The oil is a good 

 protection while it lasts. The drawback is that it is apt to evaporate rather 

 rapidly, and that it disappears quickly after rain storms, and hence the 

 application should be renewed every week or two, which renders this 

 remedy both irksome and expensive. The oil is spread in a thin film over 

 the water surface, and one ounce suffices for from fifteen to twenty square 

 feet. The treatment of cisterns and of cesspools with kerosene oil is 

 also advisable. 



The treatment of standing water with crude petroleum oil has been 

 found to have other drawbacks. It is difficult to spread the oil evenly, and 

 the wind blowing over the water is apt to drive the oil to certain spots, 

 leaving other parts of the water surface free from it. A better method 

 than the spraying of- the surface consists in injecting the oil at a greater 

 depth. 



Instead of crude oil, a chemical preparation known as phinotas oil 

 (made by the Phinotas Chemical Company of 237 Front Street, New York 

 City) has been successfully used in recent years, and found to be an effi- 

 cient and rapidly acting preparation for killing the mosquito larvae. This 

 oil is prepared from crude petroleum, but differs from it in having the 

 property of sinking to the bottom at first and subsequently rising to the 

 surface. The small globules of this oil, after breaking, diffuse themselves 

 over a large area. In some cases it has been' distributed by means of a 

 pressure or force pump, operated by hand. Experiments made in New 

 Jersey with this liquid have shown that the treatment need not be applied 

 oftener than once every four weeks, hence it requires less labor, and thus 

 becomes a cheaper remedy than the application of kerosene oil. The phino- 

 tas oil is also said to be useful in the treatment of cesspools. 



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