Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1914-07-19

with ranches at a not distant day. But m ps-
quitoes and many other winged insect pests
swarm over it. Cherrie and Miller had spent
week there collecting mammals and birds
prior to my arrival at Asuncion They
were veterans of the tropics, hardened to
the insect plaques of Guiana and the Grin
oco But they reported that never had they
been so tortured as in the Chaco. The sand
flies crawled through the meshes in the
mosquito nets, and forbade them to sleep;
if in their sleep knee touched the net The
mosquitoes fell on it so that it looked as if
riddled by birdshot; and the days were
torment, although they had done well in
their work, collecting some $50 specimens
of birds and mammals.
Nevertheless for some as yet inscrutable
reason the river served as a barrier to Ger
tain insects which are menaces to the cattle
men. With me on the gunboat was an old
western friend, Tex Richard, of the p IN
handle and Alaska and various places in be-
tween. He now has large tract of land
and some SIS 900 head of cattle in the Chaco,
opposite Conception, at which city he was
to stop He told me that horses did not do
we'll in the Chaco but that cattle throYe,
and that while ticks swarmed on the east
bank of the great river, they would not live
on the west bank Again and again he had
crossed herds of cattle which were covered
with the loathsome bloodsuckers; and in
couple of months every tick would be dead.
Mans Worst Animal Foes.
The worst animal foes of man, indeed the
only dangerous foes, are insects; and this
is especially true in the tropics Fortunate
ly. exactly as certain differences too minute
for us as yet to explain render some insects
deadly to man or domestic animals while
closely allied forms are harmless, so, for
other reasons, which also we are not as yet
able to fathom, these insects are for the
most part strictly limited by geographical
and other considerations. The war against
what Sir Henry Johnston calls the really
material devil, the devil of evil wild nature
in the tropics, has been waged with marked
success only during the last two decades.
The men, in the United States, in England,
France, Germany, Italy-the men like pr.
Cruz in Rio JaneirO, and DIR. Vital Brazil in
Sac Pauo-who work experimentally with
in and without the laboratory in their WAR
fare against the disease and death bearing
insects and microbes, are the true leaders in
the fight to make the tropics the home pf
civilized man.
Late ON the evening Of the second day pr
our trip, just before midnight, we reached
Conception. sQn this day, when we stopped
for wood or to get provisions-at pictt1-
rescue places, where the women from
rough mud and matched cabins were wash
ing clothes in the river, or where ragged
horsemen stood gazing at us from the bank
or where dark, we'll dressed ranchmen stood
in front OF red-roofed houses-we caught
many fish.
They belonged to one of the most formid-
able genera of fish in the world, the piranha
or cannibal fish, the fish that eats men when
it can get the chance. Farther north tLete
are species of small piranha that go IN
schools At this point on the Paraguay the
piranha do not seem to go in regular
schools, but they swarm in all the waters
and attain length. of 18 inches or over
They are the most ferocous fish in the
world Even the most formidable fish, the