MOSQUITOES AND KEROSENE.

New York, 1895

Entomologists Don't Think Much of Parson Long's Plan.

Entomologists do not take much stock in the plan of the Rev. John D. Long of Babylon, for exterminating mosquitoes by sprinkling kerosene from a watering pot on the surface of waters where the larvae of the insect are found. One authority said:

"Everybody knows that nothing is more fatal to insect life than kerosene; so if all the mosquitoes or mosquito eggs in the country could be sprayed with it we wouldn't be troubled long with the little pests. But that, I should imagine, would be a difficult result to accomplish.

"It is stated that the Rev. Mr. Long poured some kerosene on a small pond, and afterward the mosquitoes disappeared. That may be quite true, but I think that it was a summer breeze, blowing away from the pond that banished the insects, and not the kerosene.

"You know that at the seashore if a breeze is blowing off the land mosquitoes will swarm along the beach. On the other hand, if the breeze is coming in from the sea, there will be no mosquitoes on the shore.

"The trouble with the kerosene theory of extermination is that it must be limited. It is true that mosquitoes breed on water, but if the breeding ground be a large body of water it would be difficult to pour a sufficient quantity of oil on the troubled waters."

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, June 21, 1895, p. 1.