Mosquitoes

Air-Gunning For

AMONG Islands pastimes and tourist attractions, I have not seen this one listed. It has great possibilities in many parts of the Pacific.

Calling one evening upon a party of young men “baching’' at a lakeside holi day resort, I could not make my knocking heard, so I entered. The lights were on, and the bachelors were intent on firing an air-gun at the wall.

My hosts demonstrated the new sport.

You saw, heard, or felt a mosquito. You tracked him to the wall. If you felt extravagant, you fired a slug at the mosquito, burying him in the wallboard —or concealed the fact that you had missed him, by saying you had buried him. If you felt economical, and honest enough to admit that you had missed—if you happened to miss—you put no slug in, but fired, and the air current flattened the mosquito against the wall—which was by now as spotted with pan-caked “mossies”, as the window panes were with fly-dirt.

I found it easier to kill the mosquitoes without a slug, than with it—the same difference as in shooting a bird with a .22 or with a shot-gun.

I remembered, with regret, a friend of mine on Guadalcanal (BSD who used boxes of matches, every evening, upon mosquitoes. He waited until they fastened on his leg, lit a match, approached the confiding insect with the burning taper, and sent him to destruction. How Geoff, would have delighted in air-gunning for the vermin!

Now, you marksmen, shipping adver tisement writers, and malaria eradicators, get to work on this new sport and rid the Islands of their greatest pest!—H. T. F.

Rev. R. M. Stevenson, DD, Ph D., FRGS, has taken up the ministry at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Suva, Fiji.

Rev. P. C. Williams, who served with the Melanesian Mission in the New Heb rides for eight years, now has returned to New Zealand, where he is at present assistant-priest at St. Michael’s, Christ church. Most of his service in the Con dominium was as headmaster of the Mission’s school at Vureas (Banks Group).