1839] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 177 



' ' Eedi knew this and acted accordingly. Placing fresh meat 

 in a jar and covering the mouth with paper, he found that 

 though the meat putretied in the ordinary way, it never bred 

 maggots, while the same meat placed in open jars soon swarmed 

 with these organisms. For the paper cover he then substi- 

 tuted hue gauze, through which the odor of the meat could 

 rise. Over it the flies buzzed and on it they laid their eggs, 

 but the meshes being too small to permit the eggs to fall 

 through no maggots were generated in the meat. They were, 

 on the contrary, hatched on the gauze. By a series of such 

 experiments Eedi destroyed the belief in the spontaneous gen- 

 eration of maggots in meat, and with it doubtless many re- 

 lated beliefs." 



Suppose after having been dead, say about 260 years, Eedi 

 should come back to life and pick up a copy of The ^etc York 

 Medical Journal of December 10, 1898, and read an article en- 

 titled, ''The Cultivation of the Fla»modium malariw,^^ by L. 

 H. Warner, M. D. A portion of this paper reads as follows : 

 "Dr. Walter F. Scheele, of New York City, recently con- 

 ducted a number of experiments and investigations in mos- 

 quito development which prove that there are three distinct 

 types of mosquitoes, each possessing a distinct degree of poisoning 

 power in its sting. His claims are that mosquitoes originate and 

 develope in foul water, especially when vegetable or animal 

 albuminous substances are present. In the first stage of its de- 

 velopment the mjsquito is a conglomerate mass of different bicteria 

 and microbes, formed by decomposing matter, composed of 

 vegetable and animal albumen. The latter being in a state 

 of decomposition is a deadly poison. ;;; * Jii ^k 



*' Upon emerging from the water the mosquito is charged with a 

 surplus of albuminous poison, which must be got rid of immediate// or 

 death occurs ; hence it instinctively seeks to preserve its life by sting- 

 ing and injecting the injurious albumen into the only objects that will 

 receive it, man and beast." If Eedi came to life and read this 

 rot, he would undoubtedly be disgusted with the nineteenth 

 century and immediately desire to return to the "shades." 

 The most charitable thing we can say of the editor of The 

 New York Medical Journal is that he never read the manuscript 

 of the article, or he would not have permitted such stuff to 

 appear in a respectable periodical. 



