IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



it heartily, if the empiricism be not already 

 a part of your own stock-in-trade. Years 

 afterwards, confirmation came across the 

 ocean — from experiments with the mos- 

 quitos of the Campagna. At some spot 

 where the game was plentiful, square me- 

 tres of the same fabric in a wide range of 

 colours, were exposed. Speaking broadly, 

 black, and the dark browns blues and reds 

 were found to be popular, the lighter 

 shades unpopular. Dried mud, khaki, 

 ('gabardine's' usual shade) was the last 

 colour of all which the mosquito chose; 

 between this and purple the difference 

 was, as I remember, one to a hundred. (A 

 Gallipoli campaigner told me that he had 

 reached the same conclusion as to lice and 

 blankets.) Wherefore the man who 

 wears a blue flannel shirt in the woods of- 

 fers a standing invitation to the enemy — 

 asks for all he gets. 



The only real objects of pity are those 

 who swell when they are stung; for them 

 there is hardly another counsel than to 

 keep beyond reach of flies. One such un- 

 fortunate developed ears that flapped like 

 an elephant's; his mother, at their meeting, 

 claimed a voice as the voice of her son, for 

 his face was not the face of Jacob. An- 

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