TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS. 377 



try, can well afford to laugh at their visits, above all when 

 armed with the gun that shoots powder and kills without 

 a bullet. 



We pass by the flea, then, and pursue our investigations 

 in another direction, looking next at an insect that causes 

 far more annoyance than the Avicked flea, not only in Flor- 

 ida, but in many other countries, in every State in the 

 Union, and even up in the far-away Polar regions. 

 \/ Mosquitoes, of course. There are some places in Flor- 

 ida where these tantalizing songsters are as numerous as 

 they are in many of the coast regions or swamps of the 

 sister States, and that is saying a great deal ; but, again, 

 there are other sections, notably in the high, inland pine 

 regions, where they are practically unknown. 



Just as they are North, South, East and West, during 

 the summer season — troublesome after dark, when one sits 

 out on the porches — so are they in Florida as a rule ; this 

 thing we know, we were more annoyed by mosquitoes in 

 our Northern village home, than we have ever been in our 

 far South home. 



With ordinary mosquito-bars in the windows, and wire- 

 net doors to keep the insects out when attracted by a light, 

 and with a net over the bed, the "mosquito nuisance" be- 

 comes a very small one in the piney-woods home ; we have 

 known it to be a much greater one outside of Florida. 



We wish we could say as much for the whole State ; but 

 truth compels us to confess that we have heard of locali- 

 ties in the hammocks and along the saw-grass shores of the 

 large lakes, where double nets were used at doors and win- 

 dows and over beds, and where the housewife, in making 

 up her bread or cakes, was fain to wrap a gauze veil over 

 her face for protection from a horde of hungry mosquitoes, 

 who were anxious to make the most of her otherwise de- 

 fenseless condition. 



