I have never heard of mosquitoes being turned to any good account save in California; and there, it seems, according to Rev. Walter Colton, they are sometimes made the ministers of justice. A rogue had stolen a bag of gold from a digger in the mines, and hid it. Neither threats nor persuasions could induce him to reveal the place of its concealment. He was at last sentenced to a hundred lashes, and then informed that he would be let off with thirty, provided he would tell what he had done with the gold; but he refused. The thirty lashes were administered, but he was still stubborn as a mule. He was then stripped naked, and tied to a tree. The mosquitoes with their long bills went at him, and in less than three hours he was covered with blood. Writhing and trembling from head to foot with exquisite torture, he exclaimed, “Untie me, untie me, and I will tell where it is.” “Tell first,” was the reply. So he told where it might be found. Then some of the party with wisps kept off the still hungry mosquitoes, while others went where the culprit directed, and recovered the bag of gold. He was then untied, washed with cold water, and helped to his clothes, while he muttered, as if talking to himself, “I couldn’t stand that anyhow.”[953] The largest kind of mosquito in the valley of the lower Mississippi is called the “Gallinipper.” It is peculiarly described, by the boatmen, to be as large as a goose, and that it flies about at night with a brickbat under its wings with which it sharpens its “sting.” They tell a good story to show the superiority of the Gallinipper, over the ordinary Mosquito, in this wise. Some fellow made a bet that, for a certain length of time, he could stand the stings of the mosquitoes inflicted upon his bare back while he lay on his face. He stripped himself for the ordeal, and was bearing it manfully, when some mischievous spectator threw a live coal of fire on him. He winced, and, looking up by way of protest, exclaimed, “I bar (debar) the Gallinipper.” The Culicidæ, say Kirby and Spence, like other conquerors who have been the torment of the human race, have attained to fame, and have given their names to bays, towns, and even to considerable territories; and instance Mosquito Bay in St. Christopher’s; Mosquito, a town in the Island of Cuba; and the Mosquito Shore of Central America.[954] Democritus says: “Horse-hair, stretched through the door, and through the middle of the house, destroys Gnats.”[955]