P. H. Bahr 
147 
In the area marled H, although the children are of a good social 
status, well fed, and well cared for, the spleen rate is high—68' 1 per cent. 
These houses are built upon the Bund of a paddy field (PL XII, fig. 9). 
A and Ii are similarly situated areas, the inhabitants are of the same 
class (“ goiyas ”), but the houses are scattered, and consequently there 
is less chance of the conveyance of infection ; the spleen rate is here a 
lower one. 
The absence of any evidences of malaria at C is easily explicable. 
A small number of children only could be examined ; these had but 
recently, being the families of the police, arrived in the district. 
The areas marked F and G respectively next call for a few comments. 
G is a village inhabited by Sinhalese “ goiyas,” in close proximity to 
paddy fields, which, being naturally marshy ground, are nearly always 
flooded. The spleen rate, 83’3 per cent., is the highest encountered in 
Kurunegala, yet this village is separated only by a small belt of cocoanut 
and areca palms from the miserable and insanitary quarters of the Tamil 
oilmongers (F, PI. XIII, fig. 10); these latter quarters adjoin a bathing 
tank (PI. X, fig. 4), which, on account of the number of fish which 
inhabit it, does not serve as a breeding area of anophelines. 
At F the splenic index is less than half of that at G. The explana¬ 
tion of this fact would appear to be that the belt of trees I have 
already mentioned serves to screen off to some extent the mosquitoes 
bred in the paddy fields at G. It must be conceded that there is a 
great disparity between the prevalence of malaria amongst the children 
bred in the vicinity of these paddy fields and amongst the ill-kept 
denizens of the bazaar (L), where the spleen rate is but 7'1 per cent. 
These facts, together with those already related, are to my mind 
sufficient to condemn the paddy fields as constituting the main foci 
of malarial infection in Kurunegala. 
(2) Microscopic Examination of the Blood. The blood of all these 
435 children was systematically examined. The result will be found 
detailed in Appendix III. Malaria parasites were only found 45 times. 
The mean parasite rate for the whole town works out at 10‘5 per cent. 
The rate varies in different areas ; it is to be noted that at H, where 
the spleen rate is highest, the parasite rate is low. There are various 
factors to account for this apparent anomaly. The parasites, in all 
but two instances, were present in very scanty numbers : often but one 
parasite could be found in a slide, and it is therefore probable that many 
small infections were overlooked. None of the children were suffering 
from fever at the time of examination, the infection in nearly every 
