MOSQUITO 



3965 



MOSQUITO 



a part of the religious service. All Moham- 

 medans turn toward Mecca when they pray, 

 and so that they might know the right direc- 

 tion one of the walls surrounding the court was 

 built at right angles to the direction of the 

 building from Mecca. In this wall is a niche, 

 called the Mecca niche. Here the colonnades 

 were deeper, and the place was known as the 

 sanctuary, or prayer chamber. Beside the niche 



in the wall was the pulpit and platform from 

 which the Koran was read. Each mosque had 

 at least one minaret, a tall, slender tower from 

 which the muezzin called the people to prayer 

 (see MINARET, for illustration). Later, mosques 

 were covered by roof and dome. The mosque 

 of Damascus is one of the earliest ever built, 

 and that at Cordova, Spain, is one of the most 

 famous. 



OSQUITO, moske'toh. If one wanted 

 in a single sentence a character sketch of the 

 mosquito, few better could be found than Kip- 

 ling's famous line, "The female of the species 

 is more deadly than the male." The mosquito 

 has earned the reputation of being the dead- 

 liest of insects, and it is the bloodthirsty 

 mother mosquito that has earned this reputa- 

 tion for the species. In spite of her diminu- 

 tive size and harmless appearance, she is as 

 fierce, for her size, as a tiger, and by carrying 

 disease has probably caused more deaths the 

 world over than the sum total of tigers, pan- 

 thers, lions and other wild beasts that have 

 preyed on men since the beginning of time. 

 Her only weapon is her "bill," more slender 

 than the finest sewing needle; yet with this 

 innocent-looking weapon the mother mosquito 

 in one branch of the family often starts epi- 

 demics of malaria. In another branch she may 

 use it to bring on scourges of yellow fever, or 

 the hideous, incurable disease known as ele- 

 phantiaxis. In the least dangerous species it is 

 the weapon that is responsible for the vexatious 

 "bites" that detract from our enjoyment of 

 summertime. 



<-c, however, has unmasked the mos- 

 quito's true character, and now it is showing 

 the world how to wage successful war against 

 it In tun. th<- mosquito will doubtless become 

 rxtmct ; this depends entirely upon th<- activity 

 with uhich man i willing to combat the pest. 



A Mosquito's Biography. In Kngland and 

 some other countries the mosquito is known 

 as a gnat. It is a cousin of the common house 



fly indeed, its very name is a Spanish word 

 meaning little fly and, like the other members 

 of its family, it begins life with the egg. How- 

 ever, since it is a water insect in its early stages, 

 the mother mosquito looks about for standing 

 water when she is ready to lay her hundreds of 

 eggs. Her wings are not strong enough to 

 bear her more than two or three hundred feet 

 from her own breeding place, but unless human 

 beings are very careful about such things, it is 

 not difficult for her to locate near them a home 

 for her family. She will use a stagnant pool 

 or puddle, a gutter, a lily pond, the weedy 

 hanks of a stream, a rain barrel, a trough or 

 cistern, a tree hollow filled with rain water, an 

 open drain, a pail or tub, or an old shoe, dish 

 or can which has been thrown out and left to 

 collect rain. The important point is that she 

 must find still water, so the eggs will lie safely 

 on the surface scum until hatched. From forty 

 to four hundred are deposited, sometimes 

 singly; but in the most common specios they 

 are arranged on end in small masses like rafts. 

 (See illustration, o). 



The Baby Mosquito, or Larva. It makes an 

 ;ng study to pour some water from a 

 rain barrel or pool containing m<quito eggs 

 into a jar, covering the opening with fine 

 screening or mosquito netting and watching tin- 

 hat dung process. In a day or more, depending 

 upon the degree of warmth and light . there will 

 appear long, squirming larvae called wrigglers 

 (6, c, d, > in the illu-tration). If one of these 

 wrigglers is put with a little water into a saucer 

 and studied through a magnifying glass, it will 



