382 HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



more plentiful in the hammocks and on the coast, and also 

 in the towns, where the well-filled stores invite them to 

 come and to tarry. 



Probably the most annoying and tantalizing of all the 

 insects of Florida — at least we know it to be so in the pine 

 lands — is a tiny fly, called in local parlance a "gnat," al- 

 though, properly speaking, it is a mosquito, and belonging 

 to the mosquito family only, should be so termed. 



These little flies, miniatures of the ordinary house-flies, 

 sing and buzz around one's ears, nose, mouth, and eyes, 

 Avith a persistence worthy of a better cause, and an appar- 

 ent aimlessness worthy of no cause at all. 



For, they don't bite ; or, if they do, we have not yet 

 discovered it. We could feel more charity toward them 

 if they tormented us while in search of their living. A 

 mosquito stings — but it is an honest, legitimate sting ; he 

 wants a good meal, and means to get it as best he may. 

 But as to this "horrid little gnat," all that he wants, so 

 far as one can see, is to torment and annoy, and this he 

 does Avith a vigor and industry that must be pleasing to 

 the Father of Evil, if he deigns to notice a little fly at all. 



We look back with a shiver of " holy horror" on certain 

 experiences of our own in the cow-pen. 



Until we came to Florida we had dwelt in a great city, 

 and had never so much as seen a cow milked ; but we speed- 

 ily discovered that this was one of the many things that 

 must be learned, self-taught too, unless we were willing to 

 see our whole family deprived of that powerful factor in 

 household comfort and economy, milk, with all its accom- 

 paniments. 



As we have said, the art of milking was an unknown 

 quantity to us, the cow-pen a foreign country ; but at 

 least we had some ideas on the subject that were less eccen- 

 tric than those held by a relative of ours when a little girl. 



