24 



It will generally be a pot of stagnant water in the back- 

 yard ; but sometimes, as mentioned in paragraph 4, the 

 larvae will be found actually within the house. 



The good effect of these measures will be speedily 

 noted and appreciated by the public. I have frequently 

 observed that as soon as all the stagnant water is removed 

 from the precincts of a house the adult insects leave it 

 within a day or two probably in order to find water else- 

 where to lay their eggs in ; and once gone they do not 

 return, unless stagnant water is allowed to accumulate 

 again. 



So far as I can estimate for a town in the tropics, con- 

 sisting of Europeans and natives mixed, a dozen intelligent, 

 trained, and active men, permanently employed, ought to 

 keep five thousand houses free of Culex. The salaries of 

 these men at about jCi a month each, and the cost of a 

 few sundries, such as kerosene oil, ought not to exceed 

 150 a year a very small sum indeed to pay for such 

 a boon as the banishment of Culex from so large an 

 area. 



I have said that a householder who refuses to admit 

 members of the brigade ought to be left alone. He will 

 come round in time ; but this raises the question of the 

 possibility of employing legal measures against people who 

 annoy their neighbours by breeding mosquitoes. Municipal 

 regulations on the point would be quite justifiable ; and in 

 Havana the straight-thinking Americans quickly fine a 

 person who breeds mosquitoes. But from a very consider- 

 able experience of British methods, I would advise a British 

 superintendent of a mosquito brigade to trust rather to 

 persuasion and to his own energies than to any assistance 

 from the law. 



