Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

242 CAMPING AND WOODCRAFTthe sleeping-sickness of Africa istransmitted by insects.There is no longer any guesswork about this:it is demonstrated fact. Professor Kellogg, summingup what is now known of the life history ofmalaria-bearing mosquitoes {Anopheles) says:**When in malarial regions, avoid the bite of amosquito as you would that of a rattlesnake — onecan be quite as serious in its results as the other."The worst of it, from a sportsman's view-point,is that the farther we push toward the arctics orthe tropics, the worse becomes the pest of dangerousinsects. It is into just such countries that, nowadaysand in future, we must go in order to getreally first-class hunting and fishing. Consequentlythe problem of how best to fight our insectenemies becomes of ever increasing importance toall who love to hunt over and explore the wildplaces that are still left upon the earth.Mosquitoes are bad enough in the tropics, butthey are at their worst in the coldest regions of theMosquitoes.— Harry de Windt reports thatearth.Verkhoyansk, in Siberia, which is the arctic pole ofcold (where the winter temperature often sinksto -75° Fahr., and has been known to reach -8i°)the mosquitoes make their appearance before thesnow is off the ground, and throughout the threesummer months, make life almost unbearable tothe wretched natives and exiles. The swamps andshoaly lakes in the surrounding country breed mosquitoesin such incredible hosts that reindeer, sledgedogs,and sometimes even the natives themselves,are actually tormented to death by them.Throughout a great part of central and westernCanada, and Alaska, there are vast tundras of bogmoss, called by the Indians muskegs, which in summerare the breeding-grounds of unending clouds ofniosquitoes whose biting powers exceed those of anyinsects known in the United States. Even if themuskeg land were not a morass, this plague ofat