Naturalist.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 428, 28 July 1904, Page 8

Naturalist.

MOBE AttOUT MOSQUITOES AND MALARU. SKT has beoome evident that the reason cjp why malaria or ague ocoura in damp, gg low country is because the pools of water in suoh country are the natural breeding places of the gnats or mosquitoes. One way of getting rid of malaria is to'get rid of theee pools, or, at any rate, not to allow any to exist within half a mile of an inhabited house, Bince gnats do not habitually travel more than a quarter of a mile from the pool where they are hatched. Another way of arresting malaria, which has been tested by most convineißg experiments in the marshy country near Romp, is to place a fine wire network over every door and window of houses erected in malarious regions. The Anopheles gnats are unable to enter the meshes of the network, and so the human inhabitants are not infected by their bites. As the gnats only bite at and after sundown, it is easy in this manner to escape infection, and yet fce abroad all day. The moat important thiag in the way of avoiding infection seems to be to keep half a jqpile away from the malaria-infected population. Tbe gnats do not travel so far, and unless they themselves get the parasites from human beings already infected, they cannot give the disease. It is a curious fact that ague or malaria had ceased to exist in this country, except as an imported disease, before discoveries were made. The use of quinines which destroys the parasites in mans blood, when carefully administered, the draining of ponds near houses, and *h« removal to hospitals of infected persons, seem to have combined to break the magic circle. The true Anopheles gnats are bUU here, but they do not find persons with Laveran's paY*Bites in the blood (the parasites have gone or been killed with quinine), so the gnats do not beoome infected, and as the gnats are not infected no sew cases of infection in mam are brought about.—E. Ray Lankester, in ' Christian Rsa'm.'

HOW TO BREiK IN A NERVOUS HORSE.

Bending the other day cf ahoxfli not willing to v»ss a windmill reminded me of a horse once lent to me. This horse would not pass a wheelbarrow. "When driving him, and a wheelbarrow came in sight on the road, np want the animal on its hind' legs, and roand the trap until tbe barrow had gone by. Thrashing was of eo use. At last I thought of feeding the beast in a barrow. After a few attempts he took to his food. I then tried driving him again, and was not long ere X met a labourer with his barrow. The horse ran for it, and stopped short, expecting a good feed. As long as I had him he never again swerved from his late enemy,

A EIDE IN A MOTOB CAB. ' General' Theodore Brump, of Coronado Beacb, California, who is a confirmed motorist, complains of the prejudice against motor-oars exhibited by the birds resident on the ostrich farms there. In getting from his home in the suburbs to the gambling saloon in the centre of the town of which he is the proprietor, ' General' Brump has often to run the gauntlet through a line of two or three hundred birds, which attack the car and peck at it As it goes at only four miles an hour the birds have no trouble in keeping np with it, but circle round it, uttering their shrill, uncanny cries. It is supposed, says 'Motoring Illustrated,' that they are attracted by the glitter of the vehicle, and that on getting near they find to their joy that it is edible. They steal his gea;.caae and unscrew the wiHg-nuts of the security bolts and devour them. They embezzle and eat any locknuts that are loose, and once they took asd drank a spare tin of. petrol. His spanners and bolts have to be renewed constantly. One bird ate a pound of split pins and washers.