The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-03
AT NdRRAGANsETT.
The Matter of Mosquttos nnd Fog-A
 Scientist
Narragansett Pier, July 2S, 1898


 Wttn parties coming to the sea- shore for rest and recreation are met by four consecutive days of imperetra- ble fog and by quadrillions of mosGui- toes they are apt to wish either that they had staid at home or that they had gone elsewhere.
 The number "quadrillion" is not giv- en as the result of an actual count of the insects but indicates that their num- Der exceeds all counting possibility. The number killed 1aily may be ap- proximately estimated. Five at a slap is an ordinary feat. An average of three and third mosquitoes per slap may be safely assured. Slaps fellow slaps regularly through all the working hours of the day and at intervals of about a second. That would make to each individual 3 1-3x60-200 mosquitoes minute, or 12,O00 an hour. To be well within the limits of wise moderation, put it at ten thousand per individual per hour. That would make for each working day of ten hours one hundred thousand mosquitoes per individual. In and about Narragansett there are at the least ten thousand individuals whose chief occupation during the last four days has been killing mosquitoes. That, according to the above, would
 T million mosquitoes. One would suppose that such enormous slaughter would either perceptibly diminish the number of the assailants, or would make such an impression on the apprehension of the survivors that they would desist, retreat or scatter. On the contrary the number and the impetuosity of the creatures are so increasing as to make plausible the theory advanced by To- hide the horizon are composed of inf nitely small, young mosquitoes who are constantly ripening and constantly surging forward to take the place on the fighting line of their extinct prede- cessors. At night you have to hermet- ically seal the door and windows of your bedroom; then kill the inmates with fumes of burning sulphur; then crawl to bed in the dark and in the sul- phur. Otherwise the three quarters of liquid matter composing your person would be drained as dry as bone and the remaining arid quarter might in the morning be found to be quite unsuited to the continuance of social functions. If this state of things continues twenty four hours longer Narragansett will be depopulated, for those whom the little railroad has not been able to carry to a place of safety will have succumbed.
 The local scientist has advanced an- other theory which, however, is so hard to accept that it is even injuring his first theory by discrediting him as theorist. His second theory is that the from the centers of the fog banks are not the muffled echoes of the fog horns stationed at Point Judith and else where but the combined whisperings of untold millions of embryonic mo- squitoes There is no proving that this is not so but the public does not seem to be inclined to accept the statement, is abandoning the first theory and is falling back upon the common sense notion that the ingredients of the fog are pure fog ingredients, but of extra ordinary power and duration. Pious people, who believe in causes, assert that this is the fog held in reserve for the advent of the Spanish fleet. Now that the United States has signified it's disbelief in the possible approach of a Spanish fleet by exploding the mines in Newport harbor, it would have been very unpatriotic in Providence to have held on to it's reserve fog any longer This conclusion is satisfactory to every body but to the local scientist, who is sulking in corner.
 Apart from the liveliness of the fog and the mosquitoes the place is as dead as a door-nail. Half the hotels are more than half empty. Not one has its ordinary complement of guests In ac- cordance with the way of American people, the hotel that asks the most money has the most quests. If so dis posed, you may pay one hundred and forty dollars per week for one room If you take the same room for the whole season there will be accorded ar amable reduction to one hundred and twenty dollars. An inside room on the third story may be had for fifty-siS dollars and so on. When asked how such prices could be asked, the reply came! Unless we got such prices we should have to shut up. Besides those rooms are all double rooms" Accord ing to the American standard estab lished at Narragansett and elsewhere, z double room is room containing 8 bed wide enough for two pillows Neither the length of the pillows nol the size of the room has anything to dc with the question. So long as there are two pillows on the bed, and not on toI of one another, the room Is a double room and you must pay double price for it. Another anomaly is that if 2 single person came along, only staic over night and occupied double room the next morning he would only be