It was reserved for Finlay to depict, with greater knowledge and a juster perception, the lights and shades of Byzantine history.
Although it had long been suspected that these insects were in some way connected with malaria and other diseases, while that the species now called Stegomyia calopus was the carrier of yellow fever had been asserted by Finlay as early as 1881, it was not until the closing years of the 19th century that the brilliant researches of Ross in India, and of Grassi and others in Italy, directed the attention of the whole civilized world to mosquitoes as the exclusive agents in the dissemination of malarial fever.
Denning's comet of 1881 and Finlay's of 1886, approached comparatively near to the earth's path, the former within 3,000,000 m.
Finlay speaks of him as a capable partisan leader who had great influence over his men, and describes him as of "middle size, thin, dark-complexioned, with a bright expressive animal eye which indicated gipsy blood."
See Rhode, Res Lemnicae; Conze, Reise auf den Inseln des Thrakischen Meeres (from which the above-mentioned facts about the present state of the island are taken); also Hunt in Walpole's Travels; Belon du Mans, Observations de plusieurs singularitez, &c.; Finlay, Greece under the Romans; von Hammer, Gesch.