CONVINCING THE PUBLIC 423 
The mosquito being not only a serious annoyance, but a constant menace to 
health, its extermination becomes a matter of public concern. 
The cooperation of every household is requested. 
Please report to............ the location of any pools of stagnant water in 
your neighborhood. 
After the issuing of the circular or the holding of the public lecture, or both, 
if the members of the committee are too busy, as they are likely to be, to engage 
to any extent in the actual superintending work, an intelligent superintendent 
must be chosen, who will familiarize himself with the biology of mosquitoes and 
especially with the character of mosquito breeding-places in general. He should 
at once be put to work upon a survey of the mosquito topography of the neighbor- 
hood. It will be well for him to make a map upon which every breeding-place, 
aside from the chance receptacles about houses, should be noted with the greatest 
accuracy and care. Every house having an uncovered water tank or having 
rain-water barrels should also be noted, and for each locality the most effective 
as well as the most economical remedy should be recorded. If these remedies 
demand any large-scale work estimates of the necessary expenditures should be 
indicated. 
Such a careful report and map having been prepared and placed in the hands 
of the committee, the amount of funds necessary can readily be estimated, and 
the expenditure of such sums as it is found possible to raise can be considered and 
agreed upon. The work can then be easily carried on through the summer under 
the direction of this superintendent, and of course the amount of the expenditure 
and the number of employees will depend entirely upon the local mosquito-breed- 
ing possibilities. 
Some small communities will find that a full understanding of the problem 
on the part of individual householders will bring about great relief as the result 
of individual work, and that the only organization necessary will be perhaps the 
signing of a pledge by individuals to take care of their own premises. In other 
communities the matter will be a little more serious, but there will be some where 
the employment of a single man for two or three days a week throughout the 
summer will result in freedom from mosquitoes. Again, however, in larger 
communities the enforcement of municipal regulations will be found to be neces- 
sary before a desirable result can be obtained, and where the village is built upon 
swampy land or is surrounded by swamps the expenditure of considerable sums 
of money will be found to be imperative. 
In every community, however, there will pretty surely be ultra-conservative, 
recalcitrant and ignorant citizens—people who will not take the trouble to pre- 
vent the breeding of mosquitoes on their own premises—people in fact who will 
violently object to the entrance on their premises of an individual who will do 
the work for them. Such cases are not numerous, but they are always difficult 
to handle, and, in the absence of municipal action, moral suasion must be tried 
in the most ingenious ways which the committee can devise. Sir Ronald Ross, 
in his excellent work “ Mosquito Brigades,” in writing of such persons, puts it 
very happily in the following words: 
