i6o 'INFINITE TORMENT OF FLIES' 



mately reproduce an incredible number of minute 

 spores or ' blasts,' each capable of infecting man again 

 if it can but win entrance into his body. 



Under normal circumstances, for each Filaria larva 

 which enters a mosquito, one Filaria issues forth, 

 longer, it is true, and more highly developed, but not 

 much changed. The malaria-parasite undergoes, in 

 its passage through the body of the Anopheles, many 

 and varied phases of its life-history. As the French- 

 man said of the pork, which goes into one end of the 

 machine in the Chicago meat factories as live pig, and 

 comes out at the other in the form of sausages, ' II est 

 diablement change en route.' The mosquito is as 

 truly a host of the malarial parasite as man, and is as 

 necessary for its full development as is man. Judging 

 by the number and extent of the lesions in the insect's 

 body, it must suffer far more than man, and it is un- 

 doubtedly killed at times, and perhaps fairly frequently, 

 by the parasite. 



Whoever has watched under a lens the process of 

 ' biting ' as carried on by a mosquito, must have 

 observed the fleshy proboscis (labium) terminating in 

 a couple of lobes. The labium is grooved like a 

 gutter, and in the groove lie five piercing stylets, and 

 a second groove, or labrum. It is along this labrum 

 that the blood is sucked. Between the paired lobes 

 of the labium, and guided by them (as a billiard cue 

 may be guided by two fingers), a bundle of five 

 extremely fine stylets sinks slowly through the epi- 

 dermis, cutting into the skin as easily as a paper-knife 

 into a soft cheese. Four of these stylets are toothed, 

 but the single median one is shaped like a two-edged 

 sword. Along its centre, where it is thickest, runs an 

 extremely minute groove, only visible under a high 

 power of the microscope. Down this groove flows 

 the saliva, charged with the spores or blasts of the 

 malaria-causing parasite. Through this minute groove 



