arrive just at the moment when you are falling off to sleep, properly
fatigued with your day's work. You hear a long, threatening boom, which
finally ends with a sharp jerk, like buzz-z-z-z-z-z-zup. Then you wait
in anxious expectancy for what you well know will come next. It does
come, a sharp prick on some part where you least expected it. You slap
angrily at the place, and hurt yourself, but not the mosquito. O no! he
is gone before you can satisfy your just vengeance, and he leaves a mark
of his visit that will worry you for days after.

Wise people envelope themselves in gauze mosquito-bars, but we are not
wise, and we do not. Conceive the fury of O'Gaygun at such an
innovation, such pampering, effeminacy, luxury! Who would venture to
introduce a mosquito-bar into a community of which he is member? What
might not be expected from this most conservative of pioneers? Even Old
Colonial says it is better that we should "harden ourselves to it." But
occasionally, in the stilly watches of the night, I hear a hasty remark
from his corner of the shanty, which leads me to believe that, with all
the years of his mosquito experience, he is not wholly hardened yet.

Then there is the sandfly, another enemy of our peace. This creature is
not so bad as the first, though. It is true his sting is sharp, and
always draws a drop of blood, but there is no after irritation.
Sometimes, when sandflies abound about us, we make them contribute to
our amusement in moments of leisure. Bets are made, or a pool is formed,
and we stretch out our closed fists together and wait. By-and-by a
sandfly settles on the back of some one's hand, and proceeds to browse.
Once his proboscis is buried in the skin, the hand is opened, and he is
caught, for he cannot withdraw his weapon from the now contracted skin.
Then the capturer pockets the stakes, and executes the bloodsucker. Such
is one of our simple pastimes.

Another insect foe of ours is one not wholly unknown in other parts of
the world. It is the nimble flea. St. Patrick is not to blame for
leaving this reptile here. He is not indigenous. He was unknown to the
Maoris until the coming of the Pakeha; but he has naturalized himself
most thoroughly now. The "little stranger," as the natives playfully
term him, is to be found in abundance in every Maori whare. Excluded
with the greatest difficulty from the best appointed houses in the
colony, in the humbler residences of the bush, and in our shanty,