THE MOSQUITO AND OTHERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 300, 13 May 1911, Page 9

THE MOSQUITO AND OTHERS.

Lecturing at the monthly meeting of the Science Society at the University recently the Government Entomologist (Mr. Froggatt) gave some interesting lights upon the entomology of tropical diseases. ' ', f The mosquito, he tells us. possesses the richest part of the earth—that line tropical belt which, through its ravages, is made unfit for the habitation of white races. He had no mercy upon the mosquito, not only blaming it for keeping us out of a rich inheritance, but also for destroying the morals of the countries whore it alumnus. If is as a transmitter of fever, especially of the fatal yellowfever, that it holds its dreaded power, and only within the last (10 years lias the connection between a mosquito bite and fever-infected blood been traced. It is the female, Mr. Froggatt tells us, who does all the mischief. The male is shy and retiring, and dies young. The female lives long and bites often, and lills our uncovered water tanks and every available pool and puddle with myriad eggs, which produce quaint larvae* that breathe tnrough the tips of their tails till they reach the pupal .stage, when their breathing apparatus changes its location to the tops of their heads.

Science no longer blames sleeping on the ground, miasma, or vegetable decavs as the direct causes of fevers, now that the life histories of fever microbes have been studied. Thanks to many years of patient work in science laboratories, the transmitter of the disease has been found in the mosquito, and sanitary commissions have defeated the enemy and reclaimed even such fever-stricken places as the Barbados and Sierra Leone. The weapons of science have been modern drainage, the removal of any water holding rubbish, Hushing small' creeks with sea. water, cultivating a small fish which eats mosquito larvae, destroying saman tree*, on which parasitic hromelias growand lodge sufficient water to hatch mosquito eggs, the .sealing of tanks and straining of drinking water, and covering any remaining exposed waters with kero°sene.

The tse-tse fly came next on Mr. Froggatt's list. Tt frequents a damp and swampy country, and is of modern development in its ravages. It carries in one variety death to cattle, in another the dread sleeping sickness to man. In Africa whole villages have been wiped out by its advent, as many as 200,000 people dying in its wake. A rigid quarantine of infected patients and the use of arsenic las quinine for fevers), is evidently all that' science is able to do so far to prevent the spread of this disease. The house and blow dies are now becoming formidable pe-ts in our own country: for the one carries dirt and infections, while the other has taken to blowing the fleece of living sheep, causing the destruction of an immense quantity of woo] ami the disease anil death of alarming numbers of -bee]). The Ilea (which is only a degraded lly. Mr. Froggatt tells us) i- well known as a transmitter of plague, and now it i* also being charged with the spread of leprosy. Fortunately we have not yet naturalised the really dangerous flea. Hut ticks (the la*t pest dealt with) we have in plenty, and the loss that the Queensland cattle tick alone has caused us should be enough to make us appreciate the scientists' labors in discovering and comlwting the causes of tropical diseases