30 310SQUIT0ES 



quitoes, in order to avoid their irritating- punctures and 

 to produce the condition of general comfort which the ab- 

 sence of mosquitoes brings, no possible si:>ot where water 

 can accumulate should be overlooked. The smallest pos- 

 sible collections of slag-nant rain-water become breeding- 

 places and may swarm with larvae. Mr. E. E. Austin, of the 

 Liverpool Tropical School Exi^edition, has seen in AVest 

 Africa that discarded bottles, Swiss milk and sardine tins, 

 and cocoanut husks, frequently swarm with larvae, while 

 the water which accumulates in disused calabashes and 

 other vessels lying about outside of houses is used for 

 breeding. Mr. R. H. Pettit (Bui. 18G, Mich. Agric. Col- 

 lege Exp. Sta.), in a report on " The Insects of the Upper 

 Peninsula of Michigan," writes as follows : " Land that is 

 being cleared furnishes an ideal place for them to breed. 

 Holes made in removing stumps and into which water 

 has settled are often fairly alive with wrigglers." He 

 collected a large number of larv?e and pupa3 from a hole 

 which would hold only a small quantity of water, and 

 bred adults from them. 



"We have mentioned above that Dr. Smith has found 

 them breeding in the pitchers of the pitcher plant, and 

 Dr. Henry Strahan, in the Journal of Tropical Jledicine 

 for August, 1900, shows that mosquitoes breed in Lagos, 

 West Africa, in similar plants. In the summer of 1900, 

 Mr. W. J. Matheson, of Lloyd's Neck, Long Island, after 

 a most successful work, which included the drainage or 

 treatment with kerosene of every i^ossible ascertained 

 breeding-place within a half mile or more of his house, 

 in October, on going into his greenhouse, noticed three or 



