The mosquito has been recently charged with murder, arrested and brought to trial before a competent tribunal composed of medical men and others, and convicted. They have proved that his spouse is the principal and he the accomplice. The evidence shows that they belong to a family of mosquitoes, known by the infamous name of _Anopheles_, and they have used malaria, yellow fever and several other diseases with which to slay man; that the female is the entertainer of a very small creature, a kind of Jonah, whom she swallows, and after a time he gets down from her stomach into her proboscis, and when she bites her human victim he leaps into the wound where he remains and eats red-blood corpuscles, and when grown he breaks up into from six to ten pieces, each piece making a new animal life like the original; that they go on multiplying in this way into millions in the blood upon which they feast, and thus produce these dreadful maladies and consequent death. WATAUGA. [Illustration] BOOKS AND AUTHORS CONDUCTED BY GENELLA FITZGERALD NYE. PRISON LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. By Bvt. Lt. Col. John J. Craven, M.D. G. W. Dillingham Company, New York. Price, $1.20. The recent controversy concerning General Miles and the shackling of Jefferson Davis while the latter was a prisoner of war at Fortress Monroe, makes this new edition of Dr. Craven’s book, originally published in 1866, of timely value and importance. Dr. Craven was the medical adviser of Mr. Davis during most of his imprisonment, and his notes, taken from daily and intimate intercourse with his patient, form the basis of this volume. While written with professional reserve and military discretion, it is a most satisfactory and reliable account of the facts concerning the imprisonment of Mr. Davis, and throws an interesting and significant light on his character as viewed on close range by a political enemy at a time when prejudice and passion so generally usurped the place of judgment. Dr. Craven frankly expresses his original prejudiced and bitter attitude toward his patient, even to naming the precise occasion on which a kindlier sentiment was aroused in his breast. A stronger, sincerer tribute to Mr. Davis’ character could hardly be conceived than this plain and unadorned record of the change effected in the attitude of an honest enemy toward the man whom he abhorred as a kind of moral monster. Dr. Craven was not only impressed with the learning and ability of his distinguished prisoner, but again and again bears impartial witness to his modesty, fortitude, and unselfishness, relating conversations and incidents which particularly impressed him at the time. The strength of that impression is sufficiently evinced by the fact that Dr. Craven had the courage to publish such a book at a time when sectional feeling ran so high.