Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1900-02-08
POINTERS ON MOSQUITOES.
Male Is Musician. but Female Is
 Bloodthirsty.

Bloodthirsty.
 When a man hears for the first time that it is the female mosquito that does all the biting it makes him feel right giad. Further comfort is afforded oy the knowledge that the male mos- quito has probably the keenest musical sensibilities of any of his class of in- sects He has quite brush of hairs on his antennae and with them he hears. Mayer stuck one of his kind on a glass plate and sounded tuning forks about. When one tone was made certain hairs would vibrate, while ali the others were still. Another tone would start another set to vibrating, and so on Also, if the tuning fork ~ere at one side of the mosquito, the hairs on that antennae trembled most violently, so that when the male hears -or, rather, feeIs-the voice of his be- loved in one antennae, he wheels about SC that vibration is equal in both and lilies straight ahead to meet her. That Is about all there is to the male mos- quito. though, except that he cannot bite, for the sufficient reason that he has no apparatus with which to saw through the skin. So to speak. he has the pumps, but no drill But the fe- male is thoroughly equipped for get ting through even politicians hide. The only mystery is what possesses her to want to bite at all. How did she come by her hapkering for blood? The scientists give it up. If she laid her eggs ill the wound, like tke carrion fly, it would be easy to answer the question, but she doesn't. If she stung to defend herself, like the wasp, it would be easy. It must be her brutal passion for blood that prompts her to attack helpless human beings. She cannot get this craving by inheritance, for the chances are that none of her ancestors as far back as William the Conqueror ever had taste of human blood, and yet sit out on your front stoop of an evening, and a mosquito. not half an hour out of the water, will make as straight for you as If she had been born for that purpose. When one thinks of the great clouds of these torments that live and die in swamps where no warm-blooded animal ever comes, for fear of being mired, one can easily believe the estimate of entomol- ogists that not one in million ever samples red blood.-Ainslee's Maga- tina
 A good story is going the rounds of Simla society just now. It seems that an unfortunate clerk in one of the government offices, with twenty-three years service, recently took leave and overstayed his leave by nine days He was called upon for an explanation, and in the end the secretary ordered him to be d lissed. The clerk there upon appealed to the viceroy, who called for an explanation of the cir cumstances. The secretary showed that the man had not only overstayed his leave for nine days, but was hope lessly incompetent as we'll. His excel Ieney thereupon ordered the man to be .reinstated, and wrote across the seere- tary's explanation that he considered the hopelessly incompetent man was the one who had took twenty-three years to find out the others incom- petenee.
 Lightning Statistics.
 Lightning caused the deatn of 367 persons in the United States last year and property loss of s1.441,SS0. Few of the deaths occurred in cities. The annual number of thunderstors,- 4 given localities in this country aver ages between thirty-fve and forty-ave. The maximum is in the southeastern states.