XL. INSECTS MOLESTING FARM ANIMALS 



"Thou'rt welcome to the town; but why come here 

 To bleed a brother poet, gaunt like thee? 

 Alas! the little blood I have is dear, 



A nd thin will be the banquet drawn from me." 



— Bryant {To a Mosquito). 



In the season of black -flies, no one goes into the North 

 Woods except on business ; though it is late spring and the 

 flowers are blooming everywhere and all the world is fresh 

 and inviting, the flies are in the woods by day, and the 

 mosquitos and punkies are there by night, and there is no 

 peace of life for man or beast. The lumber-jacks, who must 

 labor there to earn a living, smear themselves with tar-oil 

 and other fly-repellants. The wild deer leave the streams 

 and adjacent woods and go far out among the rushes in 

 the open marsh, and stand half immersed in the water. 

 The hogs in their pens root up the bottom of the pools and 

 trample and roll it into a soft paste, and coat themselves 



thickly with mud. This 



is fly-proof. The bison, 



*V l v . I t f sT also, in days gone by, 



wallowed in the mud 

 about spring-holes, 

 attaining by like inad- 

 mirable procedure the 

 same desirable end — 

 immunity. 



Fly-time, fortunately, 



is fleeting. Early spring 



and late summer and 



autumn are more or less 



fig. ns. a mosquito. free from blood-sucking 



274 



