20 Inaugural Address by the President. 



of malarial fever or ague. The cause of the fever has long 

 been a mystery but at last it is to be hoped that naturalists will 

 be able to solve the mystery and that we are on the track of 

 the fell destroyer. It would appear that the cause is a living 

 organism which gets into the blood and there sets up a 

 disturbance of the system that brings on the fever. This 

 organism has been found to be not only carried to the victim 

 by a species of mosquito but actually the organism goes through 

 a change or metamorphosis in the body of the mosquito. It is 

 hoped, therefore, that if we can destroy the mosquito we will 

 be able to annihilate the disease. 



In Rome, where malarial fever never originates but only in 

 the Campagna around the city, some of these mosquitos have 

 been allowed to suck the blood from a patient suffering from 

 malarial fever and after a few days allowed to eject their poison 

 into another human being and it was found that he was 

 inoculated with the fever. If the mosquito is at once allowed 

 to attack the subject it can do no harm as the metamorphosis is 

 not completed and the organism is not in a fit state to live in 

 the human system. 



The eggs of this mosquito are eagerly sought after and 

 devoured by fish, so that they have no chance of coming to 

 maturity if laid in deep water where fish are, and thus they can 

 only come to maturity in puddles or shallow surface water 

 where fish cannot live. Their larvae also float along the 

 surface of the water, getting the oxygen necessary for thtir life 

 from the air, so they can easily be destroyed by pouring a little 

 paraffin oil on the surface of the water which, spreading out, 

 cuts them off from the air. Of course better surface drainage 

 will also have the effect of destroying them. 



If these statements should prove true, as we have every 

 reason to expect they will, we have very direct evidence of the 

 good of this ennobling study. 



It has always been most interesting to the student of Natural 

 History to investigate the similarity in structure existing be- 

 tween animals from separate parts of the globe, and if possible 



