In reality there is a certain humor in this scientific bug hunting. You are at afternoon tea with a hostess in one of the charming tropical houses which the Commission supplies to its workers. The eyes of your hostess suddenly become fixed in a terrified gaze.
“Goodness gracious”! she exclaims, “look there”!
“What? where”? you cry, bounding from your seat in excitement. Perhaps a blast has just boomed on the circumambient air and you have visions of a fifty-pound rock about to fly through the drawing-room window. Life on the Zone abounds in such incidents.
Photo by Dr. Orenstein
THE MOSQUITO CHLOROFORMER AT WORK
Once subdued by chloroform the mosquito is removed for analysis
“There”! dramatically. “That mosquito”!
“I’ll swat it”, you cry valorously, remembering the slogan of “Swat the Fly” which breaks forth recurrently in our newspapers every spring, though they are quite calm and unperturbed about the places which breed flies faster than they can be swatted.
“Goodness, no. I must telephone the department”.
Speechless with amazement you wonder if the police or fire department is to be called out to cope with this mosquito. In due time there appears an official equipped with an electric flash-light, a phial and a small bottle of chloroform. The malefactor—no, the suspect, for the anopheles malefactor does no evil despite his sinister name—is mercifully chloroformed and deposited in the phial for a later post mortem. With his flash-light the inspector examines all the dark places of the house to seek for possible accomplices, and having learned that nobody has been bitten takes himself off.