HORACE C. FOOTE, 109 East Fifty-seventh Street, New York City.
I have a collection of stamps, and would gladly exchange with any correspondents. I have stamps from Colombia, Venezuela, Germany, England, and other countries.
ELIAS DESOLA, 162 East Sixtieth Street, New York City.
I would like to exchange flower seeds with any little girl in California or Florida. I have verbenas, mixed phlox, four-o'clocks, sweet-williams, balsams, alyssum, salvia, mignonette, and red and white petunias.
ADA BELT, 1099 Wilson Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio.
I have a collection of postmarks, and would like to exchange with any correspondents of this nice paper. I am eleven years old.
"EXCHANGE," 939 Main Street, Buffalo, Erie County, New York.
If any correspondents will send me a list of the stamps they require, and also of those they have to spare, I will like to exchange with them.
JOHN R. BEDFORD, 5 Spencer Place, Fourth Street, New York City.
I would like to exchange some revenue stamps for postage stamps. Among those I wish to exchange are two varieties of one-dollar stamps and a forty-cent stamp.
LEONARD T. BEECHER, Wellsville, Alleghany County, New York.
I take YOUNG PEOPLE, and I think it is splendid.
I have a great many French, Italian, English, and German postage stamps which I would like to exchange for others.
GEORGE B. DONNELLY, P. O. Box 4574, New York City.
I am collecting postage stamps, and would like to exchange. Correspondents will please state the number of stamps in their collection, and send me their list. I have twelve hundred stamps, and I am thirteen years old. I would like to know the age of my correspondents.
CHARLES S. PETRASCH, 13 West Thirty-second Street, New York City.
I would like to exchange postmarks with any boy readers of YOUNG PEOPLE in the West. I am twelve years old.
ARTHUR S. MOORE, 40 Third Place, Brooklyn, New York.
I would like to exchange postage stamps with any correspondent.
R. L. PRESTON, P. O. Box 327, Lynchburg, Virginia.
LOUISE.--Your question, "Is the mosquito of any use in the great economy of nature?" has often been asked by many older and wiser than you, for it is not generally known that in their larval state mosquitoes form an important branch of nature's army of tiny scavengers. The larvæ live in the water of stagnant pools and marshes, and feed upon particles of decaying matter, and as their number is so very large, the amount they devour is considerable. By thus purifying the water they destroy the miasma which would otherwise arise and pollute the atmosphere to such an extent that no human being could breathe it with safety. The value of the work accomplished in tropical countries by these tiny scavengers is very great. It is estimated that the air of certain marshy regions would be so poisonous that no animal higher than a reptile could breathe it and live, were their purifying influence removed. We do not know that mosquitoes in the winged state have any useful mission beyond that of depositing the eggs which produce the larvæ, but that alone saves them from being "nothing but a nuisance."