65 



After carefully examining the various streams around, the haunts 

 and breeding places of Anopheles were very distinctly localised ; 

 many adult Anopheles were captured, and the discovery of dozens of 

 their breeding pools within a few hundred yards of the sanatorium 

 made me safe in pointing out the cause of the notorious name which 

 this building had acquired and in suggesting the remedy, by destroy- 

 ing them in the bush and preventing others from breeding in the 

 pools and bogs around. In the immediate vicinity of this building 

 numerous bogs of mud and rank grass, with an aggregate area of not 

 less than half an acre, exist ; these bogs lie hidden in the hollows of 

 the hills, and nothing could be more like African fever swamp. These 

 forming with the luxuriant vegetation around the best nidus for the 

 development and subsequent life-history of mosquitoes. (Within 80 

 yards of the main building with an ordinary teaspoon I scooped up 

 four Anopheles larvae at one time.) 



The officer commanding (General Gascoigne) having given me full 

 liberty and granted 150 Indian troops of the Hyderabad contingent, 

 we began by clearing the hillside, working out from the main building, 

 cutting and burning absolutely the undergrowth and tangled creepers 

 this for a distance of 300 yards occupied the men for a period of two 

 months. The bogs and pools were then drained by ordinary surface 

 draining, and for a period of at least two years this area is to be kept 

 rigorously free from the dense impenetrable undergrowth. The health 

 of the troops has remained good during the whole time, and the build- 

 ing is now inhabited by white soldiers. 



2. LYEMOON BARRACKS. 



A modern building situated 200 feet above the sea, on the hill 

 commanding the Northern Pass to Hong Kong Harbour. The per- 

 sistent outbreaks of fever and the almost continuous stream of patients 

 sent to hospital from this building rendered the question an extremely 

 important one to the military authorities. 



On the north side, nestling in the hollow of the hills, I found 

 numerous pools and small bogs in which were hundreds of larvae of 

 Anopheles ; especially in and around the rice fields cultivated by the 

 Chinese, in one case within 80 yards of the barracks. 



On the west side, 180 yards from this building, is the police station 

 and Chinese village of Sakiwan, which have been free from malaria. 

 Mosquitoes have been regularly collected by the police, no Anopheles 



