FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 225 



over chilblains and sea-sickness. Immunes make 

 little of these troubles with a brutality all their 

 own. It is true that a year of probation brings 

 freemasonry and indifference henceforth to the 

 insects, but of what consolation is this to birds of 

 passage ? In view, on the other hand, of the 

 importance of the tourist, American as well as 

 English, in the future welfare of Jamaica, it would 

 be gratifying if some of the medical men on the 

 island specially interested in the group — Dr 

 Grabham, of Kingston, son of the well-known 

 authority on the spiders of Madeira, and Dr M 'Catty 

 of Montego Bay are among their number — could 

 devise some means of either prevention or cure. 

 Up to the present, apart from the serious work done 

 in the suppression of the more dangerous kinds, 

 the simple question of dealing with mosquito bites 

 has been strangely neglected. As regards pre- 

 vention, the only method that I have seen practised 

 with success is the effectual screening of dwellings, 

 the best example of which I saw at the Ancon 

 Hospital, Panama, though some of the small black 

 mosquitoes seem able to penetrate within the finest 

 netting. Still, the larger villains are excluded, 

 which is something gained. The hotel that I 

 dream of for Montego Bay should be screened 

 throughout, not the windows only, but even the 

 outside verandahs, with double doors. So only 

 would life be endurable if the insects are often as 

 active as I knew them there. Natives of the 

 island do not even bother with curtains for their 

 beds, but the hotels are for such as want their stay 

 to be both short and merry, and have neither the 

 time nor the inclination for gradual acclimatisation, 

 p 



