At that season indeed, the undried-up breeding places are so few and far between that people have only themselves to thank if mosquitoes are in evidence at all; and yet in many places there is no season of the year when they are so numerous and tormenting. There are no remaining natural breeding-places, and the pains of a weekly stroll round one’s premises to ensure the emptying and cleaning out of all garden tanks, water-vessels, &c., are all that is required to secure complete immunity at that season of the year, but it is most difficult to induce people to take even this trifling trouble; and the mosquitoes are likely to flourish undisturbed until the existence of breeding places within the premises of any person is treated by the authorities in the same way as other dangerous nuisances; and yet these very people are the loudest in their condemnation of the inertia of the native in sanitary matters, and while they maintain malaria breweries on a scale in which the modest extent of his premises forbids him to compete, inveigh against him for starting a cholera factory on the most modest lines. The native who refuses to avail himself of the protection against plague of a health camp is, they admit, an impracticable fool for his pains; but the _sahibs_ of the civil lines, whose gardens supply a large share of the harmful mosquitoes to the neighbouring city, are merely “common-sense” people who attach no importance to doctor’s fads and “scientific rot” of all sorts. The native, however, has at least usually the excuse that he is unable to read or write; and for the rest, does not pretend to be a very highly civilised person. Once they have emerged from the pupa case, our means of attacking mosquitoes are comparatively feeble, and for those that habitually pass most of their time in the open air practically _nil_. In the case however of domestic species, which habitually shelter in houses, a good deal can be done in this matter; and, just as in the repression of other troublesome insects, such as fleas and bugs, scrupulous tidiness and cleanliness is by far the most important of all agencies. Useless, rarely dusted draperies and curtains, and untidy collections of clothing hung about on nails and pegs, instead of being kept in properly closed wardrobes, are the things that are mainly responsible for attracting and sheltering mosquitoes within houses, for they will not, if they can avoid it, remain in a well-lighted room, with freshly colour-washed bare walls. In the tropics, the Italian villa with its frescoed walls and minimum of useless furniture, is the ideal that should be aimed at, and not the elaborate lumber warehouse of an English drawing-room; which, though comparatively harmless in our own climate, is about as well adapted for imitation in hot countries as the coat of the Polar bear in the Zoo is suited to our summer.