CULEX. GNAT. 
Generic Character. 
Mouth consisting of seta- 
ceous piercers within a 
flexible sheath. 
TThAT well-known insect the common Gnat is 
produced from an aquatic larva of a very singular 
appearance, and which, when first hatched from 
the egg^, measures scarcely more than the tenth 
of an inch in length. In the space however of 
fourteen days it arrives at the length of sornething 
more than half an inch. In this state the head is 
very large, and furnished on each side with a pair 
of jointed processes resembling antennm; the 
thorax large and angular; the body suddenly less- 
ening from this part, and continuing of nearly 
equal diameter to the tail, which is of an abruptly 
truncated figure, and tipped with four foliaceous 
processes: before the setting on of the tail is a 
long, tubular, projecting jirocess, nearly at a right 
* The eggs of the Gnat are deposited in close-set groupes of 
three or four hundred together, and are very small, of a brown 
colour, and of a cylindric shape with pointed tips: the whole 
groupe is placed on the surface of the v'ater, close to the leaf or 
stalk of some water-plant. 
Os aculeis setaceis lutra va- 
ginani flexilem. 
