454 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 22, 1906. 
Taste of Mosquitoes. 
From Nature. 
THE KAKAPO. 
everything they see, and if possible tear it to 
pieces; consequently, near heomesteads, in 
Otago and Canterbury, when they see sheep 
skins hanging up to dry they go down to ex¬ 
amine them. If the skins are carefully cleaned 
little harm results; but if not, the keas have a 
chance to taste the fat, and when once a kea 
tasts fat, he is a ruined bird, and would sell his 
soul—if he had one—to get more. To satisfy 
this craving he attacks the sheep with fatal 
effect, causing, in some localities, very heavy 
loss to the stations. The birds are not migra¬ 
tory, and as far as I have been able to ascer¬ 
tain, rarely leave the valleys they live in. This 
is evidenced by the fact that while some stations 
lose many sheep, owing to the keas, an adjoin¬ 
ing owner may suffer no loss whatever, owing 
to the fact that the birds have not learnt the 
taste for fat.” 
When the kea has acquired the taste for fat, it 
becomes very destructive, and if he can find a 
sheep in the snow, or in any way disabled or 
prevented from escaping, it fastens itself on the 
animal’s back, and tearing away the wool and 
skin, devours the kidney fat of the living animal. 
These birds are usually found at considerable 
elevation, and are called mountain parrots. They 
are exceedingly unafraid and their inquisitive¬ 
ness makes them positively impudent. Mr. 
Harper tells a comical story of meeting, during 
one of his exploring journeys, with a group of 
keas, which finally increased to fifteen or more, 
and proved very troublesome while he was tak¬ 
ing some bearings and some photographs. He 
goes on to say: 
“While crossing the Chancellor Ridge, the 
keas which I referred to followed me on the 
wing, but owing to the ice being very slippery, 
my progress was too slow for them; therefore, 
alighting on the ice, they began to follow on 
foot. Whenever a kea makes its appearance we 
are prepared for some good fun, as. their actions 
are most ludicrous and their conversation, which 
is incessant, almost expressive enough to en¬ 
able one to understand what they mean. I 
have had considerable experience with these 
birds, but have never seen such an intensely 
funny proceeding as on this particular morning. 
The keas having settled on the ice began to follow 
in a long, straggling line, about fifteen of them. 
They have a preternaturally solemn walk, but when 
in a hurry they hop along on both feet, looking 
very eager and very much in earnest. To see 
these fifteen birds hopping along behind in a 
string, as if their very lives depended on keeping 
me in sight, was ridiculously comic. The ice 
was undulating, with little valleys and hum¬ 
mocks, and the birds would now, for a second or 
two, disappear into a hollow and now show up 
on a hummock, pause a moment, and then hop 
down again out of sight into the next hollow. 
To judge by the^r expressions and manner, they 
were in a great state of anxiety on emerging 
from a hollow on to a hummock, as to whether 
I was still there. Now and then the one in 
front would appear, craning his neck, and on 
seeing me still ahead, would turn round and 
shriek, ‘k-e-e-a,’ as much as to say. ‘It’s all 
right, boys, come along.’ And the others, put¬ 
ting their heads down, would set their teeth and 
travel ‘all they knew,’ a fat one in the rear 
evidentally making very heavy weather of it! 
“On the Chancellor Ridge they became offens¬ 
ively inquisitive, and I really could hardly take 
any photographs, owing to their anxiety to as¬ 
certain the maker’s name on my camera. How¬ 
ever, such is the perversity of affairs in general, 
that it was only when it occurred to me that a 
picture of ten or fifteen keas examining my ice- 
ax would be interesting, that they suddenly 
seemed to remember an appointment elsewhere, 
and disappeared. Had the idea occurred a few 
minutes earlier, a good picture could have been 
obtained.” 
[to-be concluded.] 
Consul-General Richard Guenther fur¬ 
nishes the following report on the mosquito 
and the alleged preference of that sanguinary 
insect for colors and persons: 
"It is stated that the mosquitoes are strongly 
influenced in choosing their victims by the color 
of their clothes. In 1841 Spence found that a 
loose fabric of white threads kept mosquitoes 
away much more effectively than one of black 
threads. Joly observed in Madagascar that 
mosquitoes prefer to alight on black soil rather 
than on white sandy soil, and rather on black 
shoes and clothes than on white. The natives 
of Madagascar even suspend pieces of black 
fabric from the ceilings of their huts in order 
to attract the mosquitoes to it. Joly also found 
that light dogs were tormented less by mos¬ 
quitoes than black ones, negroes more than 
Europeans. Similar observations were made in 
India. The Englishmen, Nuttall and Shipley, 
found that Anopheles maculipennis preferred 
colors in this order: Dark blue, dark red, 
brown red, black, gray, olive gray, violet green, 
light gray, pearl gray, pale gray, azure blue, 
ochre color, white, yellow. The malaria expert, 
Galli-Valerio, director of the institute for ex¬ 
perimental hygiene and parasitology at the Uni¬ 
versity of Lausanne, Switzerland, confirms 
these facts in his 'Manuel pour la lutte contre 
les moustiques,’ just published, as a result of 
his own experiments. He states that in experi¬ 
ments with the Anopheles maculipennis and 
Anopheles bifurcatus, 119 settled down on dark 
colors and only 33 upon light ones. Similar 
results were obtained with culex pipiens and 
culex vexans; 349 preferred dark and only 120 
lighter colors. 
“Thus the chances of the number of mos¬ 
quitoes’ bites may be decreased by choosing 
light colors for our clothes, but they cannot be 
avoided entirely. It is the same with all the 
remedies used in the open 1 air. Tobacco, smoke 
is the most efficient, but not at all infallible. 
Camphorated vaseline and other strongly smel¬ 
ling ointments rubbed on the hands are only 
efficacious until the odor has evaporated, which 
is done quickly on a hot day. The only certain 
protection is a veil of muslin gauze such as is 
worn by the Italian railroad watchmen and 
soldiers in the malarial zones.” 
From Natur 
THE KEA OR MOUNTAIN NESTOR. 
