They say the mosquitoes are bad in the north tundra. The following quote is interesting in a real observation.
I devised a mosquito gauge. I held up a bare hand for 5 seconds by the watch, then counted the number of borers on the back; there were 5 to 10. Each day added to the number, and when we got out to the Buffalo country, there were 15 to 25 on the one side of the hand and elsewhere in proportion. On the Nyarling, in early July, the number was increased, being now 20 to 40. On Great Slave Lake, later that month, there were 50 to 60. But when we reached the Barren Grounds, the land of open breezy plains and cold water lakes, the pests were so bad that the hand held up for 5 seconds often showed from 100 to 125 long-billed mosquitoes boring away into the flesh. It was possible to number them only by killing them and counting the corpses.
Ernest Thompson Seton.
Besides mosquito netting this recipe was offered as a sure mosquito off, before Off was deet invented.
Pennyroyal, one part, Oil of Tar, " " Spirits of Camphor, " " Sweet Oil, or else vaseline, three parts.
Seton noted that frog slime worked well in a skin patch test experiment, as frogs are never stung. It is a novel approachand a sort of proof that it was more than a cold warm blood situation.
Black gilled fungus also was not appealing to mosquitoes while it was still damp.
It is a personal choice that I would prefer frog slime and fungus to something of pesticides in deet.
Having been in mosquito clouds I can attest they are a thing which depresses the mind and brings on a phobia from repeated exposure.
It would have been more simple to had God just make mosquitoes taste like apples and feed on water in that way it would have been more than bats, swallows and frogs eating them.
I did hear though that mosquitoes were so large in Minnesota that they had nice hind steaks and their breast meat was fried up on Sunday brunch. That though was from a Texan who said they used their mosquitoes as flying horses.
nuff said.....as this was just about making an archive of the olde repellant.
Seriously though as another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter, there was identified in 1905 AD in the year of our Lord, the following destroyer of mosquitoes which of course could be utilized to wipe out the Neo Obama West Nile Virus carriers unleashed by Dr. Germ.
".......only creature that really affects the whole mosquito nation is apparently a small red parasite that became more and more numerous as the season wore on. It appeared in red lumps on the bill and various parts of the stinger's body, and the victim became very sluggish.
Specimens sent to Dr. L. 0. Howard, the authority on mosquitoes, elicited the information that it was a fungus, probably new to science. But evidently it is deadly to the Culex."
Ernest Thompson Seton. The Arctic Prairies
agtG
