WHO’S WHO IN MOSQUITOES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20592, 15 December 1928, Page 18

WHO’S WHO IN MOSQUITOES.

; NEARLY A HUNDRED VARIETIES . . IN AUSTRALIA. (Feoji Our Own Corresi-o.vdent.) V SYDNEY; December 6. ' Sydney’s health! inspectors and other ■local authorities are again discussing the . annual summer problem of the eradicai tion of the mosquito pest. In order. to 'stock ponds in which mosquitoes breed; a ; larvae-eating fish, enjoinc the aristocratic .name of Gambus Affine, has been im- ' ported from Rome, and is reported to be . multiplying its kind generously in the , Botanic Gardens. In the metropolis of ■Sydney there are 29 species of the mos- ■ quite.. It is not a bad share of the 98 'recorded species for Australia. Some of 'Sydney’s mosquitoes bite only at dusk; ' others make their forays at night. .Others are day biters. Others, again, .bite at any time of the day or night. One .scientist in Sydney goes' so far as to . assert that much of the money and energy ■to-be devoted to the battle against mosquitos could be far more usefully and ■ effectively employed in trying to get ■ rid ; of the bouse fly_as a really serious carrier .of disease. This gentleman asserts that . the list of possibly dangerous species of . mosquitoes among Sydney’s 29 varieties is • extremely small, that the mosquito-borne -disease in Sydney is limited to malaria, of which only two or throe case* are definitely known to have occurred, and, that, at the very highest estimate, malaria cannot be expected to exceed, in Sydney, one case in.every three or four years. His argument, in short, appears to be that it would be better to spend time and money in swatting the fly, since the mosquito* borne disease In Sydney is practically negligible.. "