Anything swung by a strap across one's shoulder will in time "cut" the shoulders painfully unless they are protected by a pad ([Fig. 246½]). A few yards of mosquito netting or cheese cloth occupies little space and is of little weight, but is very useful as a protection at night. Bend a wand ([Fig. 247]) into a hoop and bind the ends together ([Fig. 247A]), with safety pins; pin this in the netting and suspend the net from its center by a stick ([Fig. 248]).
The black fly, C ([Fig. 249]), is a very small hump-backed pest, the young (larvæ) ([Fig. 249a]) live in cold, clear running water; [Fig. 249b] is the cocoon.
There are many kinds of mosquitoes; all of them are Bolsheviks, and with the black flies and other vermin they argue that since nature made them with blood suckers and provided you with the sort of blood that they like, they have an inherent right to suck your blood—and they do it!
But some mosquitoes are regular Huns and professional germ carriers, and besides annoying one they skillfully insert the germs of malaria and yellow fever into one's system. The malaria mosquitoes are known as anopheles. The highbrow name for the United States malaria distributor is "Anopheles quadrimaculatus" ([Fig. 250F]). It is only the females that you need fear; drone bees do not sting and buck mosquitoes do not bite.
[Fig. 250d] shows lower and upper side of the anopheles's egg. [Fig. 250e] is the wiggler or larvæ of the anopheles; the anopheles likes to let the blood run to its head, and any careful observer will know him at a glance from his pose while resting ([Fig. 250g]).
Of course, you will not need fly dope on the picnic grounds, and you will not need your pocket compass on the turnpike hike, and you will not need your jack-knife with which to eat at the boarding house or hotel, but we Boy Scouts are the real thing; we go to hotels and boarding houses and picnics when we must, but not when we can find real adventure in wilder places. We shout:
There is life in the roar of plunging streams,
There is joy in the campfire's blaze at night.
Hark! the elk bugles, the panther screams!
And the shaggy bison roll and fight.
Let your throbbing heart surge and bound,
List to the whoop of the painted Reds;
Pass the flapjacks merrily round
As the gray wolf howls in the river beds.
We weary of our cushions of rest;
God of our Fathers, give back our West.
What care we for luxury and ease?
Darn the tall houses, give us tall trees!