that they are "of the order _Diptera_," "sub-order
_Nemocera_," and chiefly "of the family _Culicidae_," and he also goes
so far as to tell us that they "annoy man." As we bump along in the
muskeg and the creatures surround us in a smother, he ventures to assert
that "the life of the adult insect is very short" and that it is the
female who stings. The Doctor is a born instructor. We learn that "the
natural food of the mosquito is a drop or two of the juice of a plant."
We suspect the Doctor of fagging up on "Mosquito" out of some convent
dictionary while we have been at Fond du Lac. He is like the parson
introduced by his friend of the cloth. "Brother Jones will now give an
address on Satan. I bespeak for him your courteous attention, as the
reverend gentleman has been preparing this address for weeks, and comes
to you _full of his subject."_

The adult mosquito may have a short life, but it is a life crammed full
of interest; if the natural food of the mosquito is the sweet juice of a
pretty flower then a lot of them in this latitude are imperilling their
digestion on an unnatural commissariat. And if the female mosquitoes do
all the fine work, there is a great scarcity of male mosquitoes on
Smith's portage, and once more in the North the suffragette comes into
her own. We fear that these mosquitoes are like the Indians of whom a
Slave River priest had said to us, "These have not delicate
sensibilities such as gratitude and affection, but they have a proper
appreciation of _material things_."

Opposition is the life of trade. For every vantage-point as big as a
match-head on our face and hands the "bull-dog" contests with the
mosquito. An interesting study is the "bull-dog." He looks like a cross
between a blue-bottle fly and a bumble bee, and we took leisure as we
went along to examine the different parts of his person under a
microscope that some one carried as a watch-charm. The head of the
insect (if he is an insect) looks exactly like that of a bull-dog, he
makes his perforation with a five-bladed lancet, and he is good workman
enough to keep his tools always well sharpened. The Doctor was not
"long" on the "bull-dog." He told us that his Sunday name was
"_Tabanus_," and that was about all he could impart. The rest we could
learn for ourselves by direct contact.

Personally I have very little rancour against the "bull-dog." He looks
worse than he is, and an adversary armed with hands can easily repel
him. Fou