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OMNIANA.
55

dulged in by the refined ranks. Be melancholy, be melancholy, according to your complexion! It was when our statesmen had long faces that the phrase long-headed was introduced as synonimous with wise. If the national physiognomy goes on for another century receding from the oval as it has done for the last, the next new mythology will make the man in the moon our progenitor, and prove the genealogy by the likeness.


35. Mosquitos.

The plague of flies is of all plagues the most intolerable. Settlements and cities have been deserted in consequence of it. The mosquito, which is of all the race the most noxious, breeds in the water. Might it not be possible at the seasons when they emerge, and when they deposit their eggs upon the surface, to diminish their numbers by pouring oil upon great standing waters and large rivers, in