to natural growth. As the potato belongs to
the botanical family containing the dangerous belladonna, tobacco,
hyoscyamus, and stramonium, it is not surprising that is should also
contain a powerful poisonous alkaloid, namely, solanine. Solanine is
developed in potatoes, especially during their sprouting stage.
Violent vomiting and diarrhea and inflammation of the stomach and
bowels are caused by it. Careful peeling of sprouting potatoes, and
removal of their eyes, will lessen, if not wholly obviate, the danger
from eating them. This form of food poisoning is rare.

CHAPTER VIII

=Bites and Stings=

_Several Kinds of Mosquitoes--Cause of Yellow Fever--Bee, Wasp, and
Hornet Stings--Wood Ticks, Lice, and Fleas--Scorpions and
Centipedes--Poisonous Snakes--Dog and Cat Bites._

=MOSQUITOES.=--The female mosquito is the offender. During or after
sucking blood she injects a poison into the body which causes itching,
swelling, and, in some susceptible persons, considerable inflammation
of the skin. The bites of the mosquitoes living on the shores of the
Arctic Ocean and in the tropics are the most virulent. The most
important relation of mosquitoes to man was only recently discovered.
They are probably the sole cause of malaria and yellow fever in the
human being. The malarial parasite which lives in the blood of man,
when he is suffering from malaria, first inhabits the body of a
certain kind of mosquito. The mosquito acquires the undeveloped
parasite by biting the human malarial patient, and then acts as a
medium of infection by transmitting the active parasite to some
healthy man, through the bite.

The more common house mosquito, the Culex, does not carry the parasite
of malaria, and it is important to be able to distinguish the
Anopheles which is the source of malaria. The Anopheles is more common
in the country, while the Culex is a city pest. The Culex has very
short palpi, the name given to the projections parallel to the
proboscis; while those of Anopheles are so large that it appears to
have three probosces. There are no markings on the wings of the
ordinary species of Culex, while the wings of Anopheles are distinctly
mottled. The Culex, sitting on a wall or ceiling, holds its hind legs
above its back and its body nearly parallel to the wall or ceiling,
but the Anopheles carries its hind legs either against the wall or
hanging down (rarely above the back), and its body, instead of lying
parallel to the