BACOT : MOSQUITOES AND THE DANGER OF MALARIA. 257- 
a service being inaugurated before the men return from overseas. 
Sufferers from malaria will have relapses of fever without the 
use of either mosquito curtains or the administration of 
quinine ; for the local doctor will probably have no information 
when a potential malarial patient has moved into his district. 
Two cases of malaria in persons who have acquired the 
disease, though they have never been out of the country,, 
have already been recorded in the medical papers. This is the 
reason why the Local Government Board is turning towards 
the last line of defence—the control of Anopheles mosquitoes. 
We have in England three species of Anopheles mosquitoes :— 
A. maculipennis (figs. 2 and 3, PI. v.), the commonest carrier 
of the disease in Europe ; A. bifurcatus, a less common, but 
implicated, species ; and A. nigripes. This latter was con¬ 
sidered formerly to l>e rare, but Edwards has discovered 
a species breeding in water holes in the roots of beech 
trees, which he identifies with a species that Christophers 
records as common in root holes of trees at Simla in India. 
Christophers identifies his species as Anopheles plumbens . but 
further states that it agrees in all respects with the specimens 
of A. nigripes at Cambridge. Our third English species of 
Anopheles appears, therefore, to be Anopheles plumbens, while 
its supposed rarity is probably due to its restricted and (for 
an Anopheles mosquito) unusual habitat. It occurs in Epping 
Forest, where I took a larva this autumn from a hole in a beech 
tree in Monk Wood (fig. io, PI. vii.), with larvae of a species of 
Ochlerotatus . probably 0 . geniculatus. There is no evidence that 
this species is able to convey malaria ; and we shall probably be 
safe in considering that, for all practical purposes, Anopheles 
maculipennis is, with us, the important species of mosquito to 
control. This is fortunate for the Epping Forest authorities, as 
it is impossible to estimate how many water holes are present 
or in process of formation, not in the roots only, but in the 
boles of the trees, owing to the neglect of the use of the 
hand-saw and tar-pot, except where sweeping branches interfere 
with horse traffic. Elsewhere, broken boughs and projecting 
snags rotting back into the trunks may be seen by the thousand. 
The evidence recently asked for by the Local Government 
Board will be of service at present only in so far as it will enable 
them to chart the Anopheles-free districts, because we possess. 
