MOSQUITOES IN THE CRIMEA 9 
the evening of August 20, Sir John Swinton, in the garden of Wadham College, 
about half an hour before sunset, saw six columns of these insects ascending from 
the tops of six boughs of an apple tree—two in a perpendicular, three in an 
oblique direction, and one in a pyramidal form—to the height of 50 or 60 feet. 
During that season mosquitoes were particularly troublesome by their bites. 
Such swarms as these were evidently rather commonly seen in the marshy 
parts of old England, as indicated by the following lines from Spenser’s Faerie 
Queene: 
As when a swarme of gnats at eventide 
Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise, 
Their murmuring small trumpets sownden wide, 
Whiles in the air their clust’ring army flies, 
That as a cloud doth seem to dim the skies; 
Ne man nor beast may rest or take repast, 
For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries, 
Till the fierce northern wind with blust’ring blast 
Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean cast. 
Spenser, in his “ View of Ireland ” (1633), has the following on the subject 
of the Irish mosquitoes : 
“They goe all naked except a mantle, which is a fit house for an outlaw—a 
meet bed for a rebel—and an apt cloak for a thiefe. It coucheth him strongly 
against the Gnats, which, in that country, doe more to annoy the naked rebels, 
and doe more sharply wound them, than all their enemies’ swords and speares, 
which can seldom come nigh them.” 
Kirby and Spence have brought together several instances of remarkable 
stories from the older travels, such as the following: 
“In the neighborhood of the Crimea the Russian soldiers are obliged to sleep 
in sacks to defend themselves from the mosquitos; and even this is not a suffi- 
cient security, for several of them die in consequence of mortification produced 
by the bites of these furious blood-suckers. This fact is related by Dr. Clarke, 
and to its probability his own painful experience enabled him to speak. He 
informs us that the bodies of himself and his companions, in spite of gloves, 
clothes, and handkerchiefs, were rendered one entire wound, and the consequent 
excessive irritation and swelling excited a considerable degree of fever. In a 
most sultry night, when not a breath of air was stirring, exhausted by fatigue, 
pain and heat, he sought shelter in his carriage; and, though almost suffocated, 
could not venture to open a window for fear of the mosquitoes. Swarms never- 
theless found their way into his hiding-place ; and, in spite of the handkerchiefs 
with which he had bound up his head, filled his mouth, nostrils, and ears. In 
the midst of his torment he succeeded in lighting a lamp, which was ex- 
tinguished in a moment by such a prodigious number of these insects, that their 
carcasses actually filled the glass chimney, and formed a large conical heap over 
the burner. The noise they make in flying can not be conceived by persons who 
have only heard gnats in England. It is to all that hear it a most fearful sound. 
Travellers and mariners who have visited warmer climates give a similar account 
of the torments there inflicted by these little demons. One traveller in Africa 
complains that after a fifty miles journey they would not suffer him to rest, 
and that his face and hands appeared, from their bites, as if he was infected with 
the small-pox in its worst stage. In the Hast, at Batavia, Dr. Arnold, a most 
attentive and accurate observer, relates that their bite is the most. venomous he 
ever felt, occasioning a most intolerable itching, which lasts several days. The 
sight or sound of a single one either prevented him from going to bed for a 
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