ON PREHISTORIC MOSQUITOES

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1434, 8 May 1912, Page 9

ON PREHISTORIC MOSQUITOES

LARVAE IN ROCK. If the dispatches from Washington are true, tho Government has a semi-official message from the world of G0,000,000 years ago. Assistant-Secretary of State Adeo received a curious prehistoric deposit from IJln7.il, and, in ■chemically analysing it, found twD minute larvae inside the rock. He was so astounded, that lie, sent the embryonic animals to (ho Agricultural Department. Fader scientific development tlio larvae produced two magnificent mosquitoes. It is too bad. that this was not wholly covered by established oflicial investigation, for Mr. Adee, after all. is not a Government chemist, though a chemical ■expert. However,-the authority covering tho case seems good, and it will go to strengthen the assertions made by workers in stone quarries from time to time that they happen, in splitting tlie living rock, on "toads or frogs living in a state of suspended animation. There have been .'.evera! such discoveries in Indiana—a most notable one fifteen years ago in the stone quarries near I.egansnort. It was \rtte that the toad in this ease, as in some ithers, was shown, but it looked like any til her toad. Though in some instances the little hemetically-sealed cells in which such living things have been held, for nobodv knows how long, have been shown, the stories have been generally discredited, or it has been insisted that there was some mistake. The Smithsonian Institution has, however, taken up tho investigation of the prehistoric mosquitoes. Its experts declare that the rock in wlrch thev were found is not less than 00,000,000 vears old. and it possiblv may have been formed 200,000,001) years ago. If these mosquitoes atul the frogs or toads caught in the formation process of stone now far underlying the surface of tho earth are finally accepted, we have a far more eloquent message from the ages of the earth's formation than is found 111 the mute tracery of ferns and fishes in tho strata. It is declared that the mosquitoes that developed brought with them the song that wo know. The.v were yellowfever mosquitoes, "just like the ones found in Central America to-day. We have known that the mosquito was very old for in Egyptian excavations they have been found in honey of, four thousand years ago.—"lndianapolis News.'