The European in Africa, as Ross says, is generally neglectful of his health; and the "unhealthiness" of the African coast is to some extent due to the life that men lead there:-- "Let us compare the habits of a European in a business-house in Calcutta with the habits of a European in West Africa. In Calcutta he sleeps under a punkah or mosquito-net, or both; he dresses and breakfasts under a punkah; in the evening he takes vigorous exercise, and he dines under a punkah. He wears the lightest possible clothing, he lives in a solid, cool, airy house, and he obtains very good food; once in five or six years, he returns to Europe for leave.... In Africa, the houses are frequently very bad; in Freetown, for instance, they are the same as the houses of natives, and are mingled with them. The Anglo-African seems to imagine that he can live in the tropics in the same manner as he lives in England. He seldom uses a punkah, except perhaps for an hour at dinner-time, and, not seldom, he neglects even the mosquito-net. The food is often, or generally, execrable. Owing to the frequent absence of gymkhanas and clubs, the exile obtains little suitable exercise." But whatever risks the old resident may choose to take, the newcomer can at least use a proper and efficient mosquito-net at night, and avoid sleeping in a native house, and protect himself in these and the like ways against malaria. 4. _The keeping down of Anopheles._ The breeding places of _Anopheles_ are ponds, swamps, and puddles, roadside ditches, tanks, and cisterns, old disused canoes, and the like collections of stagnant water: also the smaller receptacles that are more generally occupied by _Culex_, such as broken bottles, old tins, pots, and calabashes, and barrels, whatever will hold water--all the débris and broken rubbish round huts or houses. In all these places, _Anopheles'_ eggs or larvæ are found; and, with practice, it is easy to detect them. Of course, it is not easy to wage war against the adult mosquito: the work is, _Venienti occurrere morbo_, to organise gangs of workmen, or of prison labour, and "mosquito brigades"; to clear the ground of cartloads of old biscuit-tins, broken gin-bottles, and other dust-heap things, in and around the place; to cover-in the cisterns, rain-barrels, and wells; to clean pools and duck-ponds of weed, and stock them with minnows; to put a film of kerosene to the puddles, or sweep them out, or fill them up and turf them over; everywhere, to drain, and level, and clean-up the surface soil; and everywhere, by these and the like methods, to break the cycle of the life of the _plasmodium malariæ_:--