THE MOSQUITO PEST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21054, 17 June 1930, Page 7

THE MOSQUITO PEST

A PREVENTIVE INCREASE. FISH IMPORTED. (Special to Daily Times.i AUCKLAND, June 16. Everyone will wish good luck £o a tin--ful of gambodian fish that arrived on the Aorangi for the Cawthron Institute. They are quite small specimens of the fish family, but they have a useful habit of. living on the lame of the mosquito. when they can get it and have been known to "clean up” pools completely. This tinful of fish comes from the Pan-Pacific Research Institute at Honolulu, where so much good work has been done in fighting tropical diseases. It is consigned to Mr W. J. Phillips, of the Dominion Museum, and he came up to Auckland specially to take charge of it. ■ The fish will be bred at CaAvthron and, experiments made in mosquito-infested pools. Although the habits of the fish have been closely studied at Honolulu ,and elsewhere in the tropics, it has yet to he seen whether they will follow the same habits in New Zealand. These gambodian fish that arrived in Auckland are quite small— : no, larger than a gudgeon, or about the size of an extra big whitebait. They travelled “de luxe” in-the.doctor’s cabin, and were so well looked after that only about half a dozen, had, to ho “ buried at sea.”