A Real Boon.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue XXII, 30 November 1901, Page 1035

A Real Boon.

Science has dosed with the mosquito in what may be a death struggle for that pest. And science gives a needed testimonial to the sanity of the age. To devote time to Arctic exploration, wireless telegraphy, political economy, and non-essentials, while the mosquito actually kepi down the average of human happiness, was to behave irrationally. The mosquito could fetch malaria to the best of us. And what should it profit a man to establish the authorship of the Pentateuch, or demonstrate the objectivity of the sea serpent, if he lost his health meanwhile, or even if his comfort were destroved and his temper quickened? What avail to know all else but how to keep from being stung to desperation b\ a creature that knows nothing except how to sing at its work? And now science, with its trusty kerosene can. goes out to pour oil upon the troubled waters, and myriads of mosquitoes yet unborn stay that way. An addition is thus made to the reasons for which life is worth living, and. of all human effort, how little has achieved so much? When the triumphs of tin twentieth century are recounted this should be foremost. But it probably will not be. The mosquito will be rather an interesting tradition. and the populace, no longer, speckled and lumpy, will he passing laurels to the deviser of inter-planet ary communication, or something else which we could do very well without —“Puck.”