410 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL BISTORT SOCIETY, Vol XX. 



In Bombay, public fountains also seem to be a favourite breeding- 

 place of N. stephensi, and the people who live in the neighbourhood 

 of these fountains should remember this fact, for during the course 

 of last year nearly 'every fountain in the street was found to be 

 infected. 



Neglected private fountains, garden tanks and mali tubs are also 

 a source of danger, but it often happens that the people to whom 

 they belong escape the consequences of their carelessness and their 

 neighbours suffer instead. This fact was very forcibly brought to 

 my notice on one occasion when I was visiting certain houses in 

 the neighbourhood of Apollo Bunder. I had called at one house 

 and obtained permission from the tenant of the top floor to examine 

 the house cisterns. While talking to him he alluded to the fact 

 that he had been suffering repeatedly from malaria for the past 

 two years, the period during which he had lived in the house. 

 Previously when staying in another part of Bombay he had kept 

 quite free of fever for many years. On hearing this I asked per- 

 mission to see his bedroom in order to look out of the windows. 

 At the first glance I noticed a small round tank in a garden 

 immediate^ below the windows. This garden belonged to another 

 house. No mosquitoes were breeding on his premises so I visited 

 the tank in the neighbouring garden and found it swarming with 

 thousands of larvae of N. stephensi. In another- case the occupants 

 of a house, anticipating my visit had caused their mali to fill in a 

 small fountain with earth but a little of the water still remained 

 round the edges and this contained many larvas of N. st&plwibsi, 

 showing the condition that had existed previously. 



Temporary breeding places. 



Now every one knows that the temporary pools of water that 

 collect during the monsoon become stocked with thousands of 

 mosquito larvae, and in past years it has often been the custom to 

 attribute the presence of malaria in Bombay to the existence of 

 numbers of pools of water of this kind. I have even heard it 

 gravely stated that the whole of the malaria in the City was due to 

 the collection of stagnant water on the Flats and the presence of 

 the storm-water reservoir at Mahaluxmi. But it is an interesting 



