CHAPTER X 

 MOSQUITOES AND FLIES 



Thoughtful persons are much given to pondering on 

 what is to be the outcome of our present age of intensive 

 mechanical development. Thinking, the writer holds, is 

 all right as a means of diverting the mind from other 

 things, but those who make a practice or a profession of 

 it should follow the example of that famous thinker of 

 Rodin's, who has consistently preserved a most com- 

 mendable silence as to the nature of his thoughts. We 

 can all admire thinking in the abstract; it is the expression 

 of thoughts that disturbs us. So it is that we are troubled 

 when the philosophers warn us that the development of 

 mechanical proficiency is not synonymous with advance- 

 ment of true civilization. However, it is not for an 

 entomologist to enter into a discussion of such matters, 

 because an observer untrained in the study of human 

 affairs is as likely as not to get the impression that only a 

 very small percentage of the present human population 

 of the world is devoted to efficiency in things mechanical 

 or otherwise. 



There is no better piece of advice for general observance 

 than that which admonishes the cobbler to stick to his 

 last, and the maxim certainly implies that the entomolo- 

 gist should confine himself to his insects. However, we 

 can not help but remark how often parallelisms are to be 

 discovered between things in the insect world and affairs 

 in the human world. So, now, when we look to the insects 

 tor evidence of the effect of mechanical perfection, we 

 observe with somewhat of a shock that those very insect 



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