426 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 
W. J. Matheson, speaking before the First Anti-Mosquito Convention in New 
York, December 16, 1903, concluded that the work carried on had demonstrated 
that, with the exception of the salt-marsh mosquitoes, the mosquito nuisance 
can be controlled and abated in almost any locality where intelligent cooperation 
can be secured and a systematic inspection made of the premises for the purpose 
of destroying the breeding-places. Extermination, in his opinion, will ex- 
terminate just as far as the intelligent land owner is willing to carry it, but 
that it can not be done once and for all any more than weeding a garden or the 
cropping of a lawn can be done once and for all. He concludes his paper with 
the following words: 
“ So far as my experience goes, it has been demonstrated that mosquitoes can 
be as completely exterminated in any locality as dirt can be swept from a build- 
ing, or as weeds from a walk, with the possible exception of the Culex Sollicitans, 
and with the exercise of no more intelligence and much less labor than is required 
in the performance of many domestic duties. My experience would lead me to 
conclude that if mosquitoes continue to exist in any locality, it is because the 
people are too indifferent to the annoyance to take the trouble to be rid of it.” 
THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERESTING CHILDREN. 
Under the general head of “ Remedies ” we have mentioned the efforts made 
by Professor Hodge, in Worcester, Massachusetts, to interest the school children 
of the city in the search for mosquito breeding-places. This must have been in 
1901-2. But, the most serious and productive effort seems to have been made at 
San Antonio, Texas, a year or so later, at the initiative of Dr. J. 8. Lankford, 
of that city. 
In November, 1903, there were a few cases of yellow fever in San Antonio 
which caused several deaths, and a consequent interruption of commerce that 
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the effort to allay the panic, the 
existence of yellow fever was denied, not only by persons having business in- 
terests in the city, but by many medical men as well. Very many adults not 
only denied the existence of the fever in the city, but denied the relation between 
the mosquitoes and the fever. Perhaps the majority of the adults seemed too 
old to learn; and to the enlightened physicians it appeared impossible to begin 
education at the wrong end of life. 
The Chairman of the Sanitary Committee of the School Board (Doctor Lank- 
ford) grasped the happy idea that if the children were properly educated, sani- 
tary matters in the future would be much better attended to. He suggested to 
the Board that it would be valuable to educate all of the school children of the 
city in prophylaxis and make sanitarians out of them all. The School Board 
heartily approved of the proposition, and the campaign was at once begun to 
educate the children on the subject of insects as disease carriers. The best 
recent literature on the subject was procured and furnished to the teachers, 
and a circular letter was sent to them outlining a proposed course and offering a 
cash prize for the best model lesson on the subject. Teachers became deeply 
interested. A crude aquarium, with mosquito eggs and larve was kept in 
every school room, where the pupils could watch them develop; and large 
