When the young female mosquito emerges from the water, she lays her eggs in the way described, and her offspring following in time her example, several broods are raised in a single season. Many of the old ones die off; but a sufficient number hybernate under the bark of trees and in dwelling-houses, to perpetuate the species in the early spring months of the following year. Another insect scavenger, found along the low shores of the Gulf, is the blow-fly, and one very useful to man. Of one species of this insect the distinguished naturalist Reaumur has asserted that the progeny of a single female will consume the carcass of a horse in the same time that it will require a lion to devour it. This singular statement may be explained in the following way. The female fly discovers the body of a dead horse, and deposits (as one species does) her six hundred eggs upon it. In twenty-four hours these eggs will hatch, producing about three hundred female larva, which feed upon the flesh of the horse for about three days, when they attain the perfected state of flies. The three hundred female flies will in their turn deposit some hundred and eighty thousand eggs, which become in four days an army of devourers, and thus in about twelve days, under favorable circumstances, the flesh is consumed by the progeny of one pair of flies in the same time that a lion would devour the carcass. Our sleepless night coming at last to an end, we rowed, at dawn, along the prairie shores of the northern coast towards the open Gulf of Mexico. Back of the prairies the forests rose like a green wall in the distance. A heavy fog settled down upon the water and drove us into camp upon the prairie, where we endured again the torture caused by the myriads of bloodthirsty mosquitoes, and were only too glad to make an early start the next morning. A steady pull at the oars brought us to the end of a long cape in the marshes. About a mile and a half east of the land's end we saw a marshy island, of three or four acres in extent, out of the grass of which arose a small wooden light-house, resting securely upon its bed of piles. There was a broad gallery around the low tower, and seeing the light-keeper seated under the shadow of its roof, we pulled out to sea, hoping to obtain information from him as to the "lay of the land." It was the Light of St. Joseph, and here, isolated from their fellow-men, lived Mr. H. G. Plunkett and his assistant light-keeper.