40 MOSQUITOES 



writes tliat in Montana he has seen all the workhorses in 

 the field sheathed in sheets during- the day, and these Avere 

 dotted with small blood spots. 



An observation made by my colleague, Mr, E. A. 

 Schwarz, at Corpus Christi, I have had occasion to quote 

 several times. He says that at this place, when the wind 

 blows from any other direction than south, " hundreds of 

 thousands of millions " of mosquitoes blow in upon the 

 town. Great herds of horses run before the mosquitoes in 

 order to get to the water, but that with a change of wind 

 the mosquitoes disappear. The instance mentioned by 

 the Hon. J. D. Mitchell, of Victoria, Texas, and which is 

 quoted in the section on " How Far Do Mosquitoes Fly ? " 

 is another indication of the enormous numbers in which 

 these insects maj' occasionally occur, even in localities 

 where they are ordinarily not very abundant. 



In olden times, mosquitoes appear to have been quite 

 as numerous as they are to-day, and the literature of pop- 

 ular entomology contains many instances of the enormous 

 numbers in which mosquitoes have occurred in times past. 



In ancient Greece, according to Pausanias, inhabitants 

 were forced to abandon their homes on account of mos- 

 quitoes' making it impossible for them to remain. Mionte, 

 a rich city of Ionia, was abandoned by its inhabitants on 

 account of mosquitoes which forced them to flee to Mileta. 

 The same thing happened with Pergamo, a beautiful city 

 in Asia. Someone has called attention to the fact that 

 Theodoretus says that Sapor, King of Persia, was com- 

 pelled to raise the siege of Nisibis by a plague of gnats, 

 which attacked his elei3hants and beasts of burden, and 



