November 18, 191.]
not only will the access of passengers be impeded but another special staff will be needed to perform the work. As it stands, a passenger landing in a country will spend får more in dutinble goods than the value of those brought with him, so that each passenger thus interdicted will cause a sub- stantial loss of revenue.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
Experience everywhere points to the ad- vantage from a merely financial point of view of simplifying classifications. That was done in the present tariffs, and the result has been found beneficial in expedit- ing the work of the Customs itself. It is true that that classification after a lapse of upwards of forty years is false and anti- quated. This must always happen when the opportunities for periodical revision are rejected. The Treaty provided for a decen- nial revision, and Great Britain. even against the immediate benefit accruing to herself from duties much blow a fair | MOSQUITOES AND MALARIA IN Tariff rate, pressed on the Chinese Govern- ment their revision on a practical five per cent. basis. Notwithstanding the efforts of successive Ministers, obstacles were always thrown in the way by those who were to be the most benefitted. The Chinese Govern- ment as a fact was opposed to all tariffs, and its object was to make each individual transaction an opportunity for private treat- ing. The experience of Old Canton was sufficient a generation ago to prevent
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HONGKONG.
(Daily Press, 15th November.)
393
No
celebrated spot to the Missions Etrangères time, by the Military authorities. was on the point of completion, the Portu-auopheles were discovered in the contribu- guese authorities stepped in, yielding to the tions sent from eleven of the thirty-six pressure of public opinion, and saved from collecting areas. Tung-Chung, Tai-Po' and passing into the hands of a foreign, though | Shek-O were the places that gave the big- religious, corporation a place so bound up gest proportion of anopheles. Of the three with the life of the great Portuguese epic species of anopheles-the unserviceable or port. There are, of course, no sentimental useless insect—A. Sinensis breeds mainly reasons connected with the Hotel property in paddy fields and in the water-channels now in question, but the official intervention and runnels in and about them ; A. Maen- of Seuhor HORTA E Costa will nevertheless latus, and A. Minimus-both new and commend itself. As we have said before, hitherto undescribed-are chiefly generat apart from its significance with regard to in ravines and nullah-bottoms. Of the French activity in Southern China, the twelve species of culex, three are authorita- political aspects of the transfer to France tively ranked as new species, four others of the Hotel need not have troubled Hong- were known, and five others, not yet sub- kong. We imagine, however, that a feeling mitted to Mr. THEOBALD, the British of relief will be experienced alike in official Museum entomologist, Dr. Thomson thinks and unofficial circles here that M. DOUMER'S may also be new to s ience. Culex Fatigans, scheme has proved abortive.
a largish brown mosquito, and quite a frequently encountered as the day-flying black and white striped mosquito commonly known as the Tiger Mosquito (C. Sente!luris), is the usual host of Filaria Nocturna, the blood-parasite that is the cause of elephan- tiasis and its allied diseases, cares of which are not uncommon with us. This is another reason why the campaign, publi; and pri- vate, should be prosecuted with unabated vigour now that the favourable reason for doing so is upon us. Severe cold, unless protracted, does not kill the larvac, as was supposed: it arrests their development, and makes thein sluggish and torpid; but they revive again under the genial influence of Hongkong is not as malarions, the sun. by any means, as the Coast of Guinea ; and yet there, in our West African possessions, according to the latest mails, they do not despair of getting the upper hand. Their wholesome example might worthily and beneficially be copied here. Bedroonis and adjoining verandahs might be maile less liable to inosquito inroads, if some kind of fine wire gauze extended over the perforated woodwork that almost invariably go's round the four sides of the ceiling: for, there is not the slightest doubt that in the daytime large numbers of inosquitoes make their home among the roof-beams, whence they hungrily descend, at nightfall, to their banquet of human blood, through. the fret-sawn borders alluded to, returning thence for purposes of digestion when gorged.
The report by Dr. J. C'. THOMSON on the results of a systematic examination and classification of the mosquitoes found in Hongkong and its dependencies, extending
A clear year, over
and printed in the Government Gazette of the 9th inst., is of the most practical interest. Insects were for- wurded to him, week by week, from thirty return to the old system, but that six police stations. About two-thirds of the generation has passed, and the present has specimens sent were caught either in the forgotten the lesson. The recent notifica- evening or from mosquito-curtains in the tion, with its attempt to make each transac-early morning: the remainder were taken tion A.
natter for separate and private during the daytime. bargaining, is an indication that the old leaven is not yet worn out. It is a matter of comparative facility to make those tem- porary arrangements needed till a better system is possible, but we trust the British Government will meanwhile see its way to stop the entrance of a system which is fraught with trouble and danger in the future.
THE FRENCH AND MACAO,
(Daily Press, 14th November.) Our readers have been aware for some time now that the French Government has had in contemplation the establishment of a naval and military sanitarium at Macao, and that with this object in view negotia- tions were entered into for the acquisition of the well-known Boa Vista Hotel in that Colony. We were enabled recently to state that the arrangements for the transfer of the Hotel property were all but completed. It turns out now that the last step in the negotiations is not to be taken after all. Exercising the prerogative which the local Government enjoys by statutory powers, H. E. Senhor HORTA E COSTA, Governor of Macao, with the advice of his Council, has determined that it is in the interests of the Colony that the Boa Vista Hotel should be expropriated, and the arrangements for the transfer accordingly fall through. Our Portuguese contempor- ary O Porvir in its last number but one foreshadowed this result, but it is from information received by us yesterday that we are able to be the first to announce definitely the determination of the Macao authorities. That the Portuguese commu- nity will hail the news with satisfaction we entertain no doubt. The action of H.E. the Governor of Macao is not without a precedent. Whatever reasons may be urged by French colonial expansionists against his decision, the story of the cancelled purchase of the celebrated "CAMOENS Grotto" may be pointed to as a provious case of such interference by the Govern ment of Macao. When the sale of that
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THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT
GLASGOW.
No selection was made: the specimens were captured and killed with a whiff of tobacco smoke, as they came to hand, then put into match-boxes and consigned, each week-end, to Dr. THOMSON. Their numbers may thus be fairly assumed to represent the normal prevalence of the insect in our midst. In all, 32,266 insects were submitted for ex-¡ amination during the twelve months; and, of these, 31,390 turned out to be inosquitoes, the balance being made up of fungus gnats, midges, sand-flies, etc. Of this huge total, 3.7 per cent were anopheles of three species, and the rest, 96.3 per cent, culex of twelve species. After tabulating the monthly numbers and percentages of anopheles and culex, the facts regarding anopheles were graphically charted, and the diagram placed alongside a malaria chart constructed from data supplied by Dr. F. J. A. BERINGER, Civil Surgeon, R.A.M.C. In Dr. THOMSON's own weighty words: “The、 result is a remarkable testimony to the truth of the, mosquito-malaria theory." The two curves, to all practical intents, move coincidently: a rise iu one being followed by a corresponding rise in the other. The anopheles curve was at its lowest in the month of February: in the chart giving the monthly percentage of malaria cases among European troops in Hongkong, during the years September, 1896, to September, 1901. February is also the month when the malaria curve was at its nadir or thereabouts. Two slight varia- tions are easily explained. The anopheles curve for September and October, 1900, is far too high; but, during that period, mosquitoes were almost entirely from the worst fever stations. Then again, both curves fell suddenly this year, in July, when in the ordinary course of observed events they should both have risen. The anopheles curve dropped owing to the organised de-astronomy has learned more struction of larval mosquitoes, and the effec. Live curing of their pools in the vicinity of all the collecting stations. The malaria curve dropped in direct response to unusual pro- phylactic measures adopted. about that
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(Daily Press, 11th November.) The meeting of the British Association at Glasgow this year had absolutely nothing to offer in the way of discovery. It was strange blank to offer at the beginning of a new century, after the passage of one noted for the new light it has thrown on knowledge in general as the nineteenth, The very first day of that century was marked by a discovery of first-class import- ance, that of the planet Ceres-the very first of that group of minor planets which have so assisted in our knowledge of the solar system, not to speak of the insight thereby afforded into many of the more abstruse points connected with astronomy in general. The British Association seems to have fallen in with one of these barren patches marked on the celestial atlas, where the most power- ful means of observation at our disposal fail to elicit a single ray of light. Yet from apparently unpromising regions these
than one lesson, and it seems likely that in more than one respect the Glasgow Meeting of the Association, barren as it has seemed, may mark the beginning of a new scientific epoch. Such at least was the suggestion of