XCli PROCEEDINGS. 



Now came the day of glory for the fly-catcher who with his net 

 used to frequent the town pump, a harmless man supposed to have a 

 bse in his bonnet as well as a mosquito in his net. But from over all 

 the world except Nova Scotia and some other provinces, these fly- 

 catchers reported the species native to the country, so that the malar- 

 ial regions of the world were soon proven to be coterminous with the 

 range of certain species. The unproductive knowledge which had been 

 growing for twenty years and more, now suddenly became productive 

 with a fruition of life and health and wealth to the world. 



But the end of the work of these for-so-many-years unproductive 

 toilers with the microscope and the insignificant flies did not yet cease. 

 A species of Culex, harmless from a malarial point of view, has been 

 proven only this year to have been the unsuspected, but sneaking and 

 most gigantic murder of tropical America. As Danelewsky's discovery 

 could not ha.ve been made without Laveran's, and as Ross' discovery 

 could not have been made without Danelewsky's, so Sternberg and 

 Reed's could not have been made without Ross'. 



YELLOW FEVER OBJECT LESSOX. 



Before Laveran, in 1 880, demonstrated the presence of the jelly- 

 speck parasite in malarial blood, the blood of the victim of the terrible 

 Yellow Fever plague was being examined ; but the microscope was 

 able to show nothing which could be proved to be the cause of the 

 disease. From the range of the fever and its retreat before cold 

 weather, some species of musquito were suspected, and were experi- 

 mented with ; but the result for over twenty years was still negative. 

 Dr. Carlos Finlay, in Havana, from 1881 to 1893, had no less than 

 eighty-eight human subjects bitten by mosquitoes which had fed a few 

 days previously on Yellow Fever patients from the second to the sixth 

 day of the disease. But the results were so doubtf nl as to be negative, 

 for only one case developed into a slight attack, while thirteen were 

 attacks of acclimatization fever, generally at too long and irregular 

 intervals to be deemed due to the inoculation. We now know why 

 Finlay came within an ace of the discovery, but was still so far from 

 it. There was a peculiarity in the facts which he never suspected, for 

 it was not suggested by the cognate previous discoveries. Nature does 

 not work in accordance with our preconceptions. It has its own 

 habits, which we must discover, and we may guess a thousand times 



