Miscellaneous
(Page 9 of 14)

MOSQUITOES, BLACK FLIES, AND MIDGE.

These pests will annoy you exceedingly almost everywhere in the summer. In the daytime motion and perspiration keep them off to some extent. At night, or when lying down, you can do no better than to cover yourself so that they cannot reach your body, and have a mosquito-bar of some sort over your head. The simplest thing is a square yard of mosquito-netting thrown over the head, and tucked in well. You will need to have your hat first thrown over the head, and your shirt-collar turned up, to prevent the mosquitoes reaching through the mesh to your face and neck.

A better way than this is to make a box-shaped mosquito-bar, large enough to stretch across the head of the bed, and cover the heads and shoulders of all that sleep in the tent. It should be six or eight feet long, twenty to twenty-six inches wide, and one yard or more high. It will be more durable, but not quite so well ventilated, if the top is made of light cloth instead of netting. The seams should be bound with stout tape, and the sides and ends "gathered" considerably in sewing them to the top. Even then the side that falls over the shoulders of the sleepers may not be loose enough to fill the hollows between them; the netting will then have to be tucked under the blanket, or have something thrown over its lower edge.

Sew loops or strings on the four upper corners, and corresponding loops or strings on the tent, so that you can tie up the bar.