The Book of Bugs. 



As to offspring, mosquitoes believe : The more, the 

 merrier. Well, they may ; they don't have to raise them. 

 There is no walking the floor nights with the youngest, 

 or sitting up to mend stockings ; no worrying about the 

 second summer you know if you bring them through 

 the second summer all right; there is no scheming 

 to put Tom through Harvard, or Dorothy through 

 Vassar. It is very simple. Mamma lays from twenty 

 to forty dozen eggs in some quiet pool, along about 



Fig. 9. Culex pungens : egg-mass above in the center; young larva, 

 greatly enlarged, at right; young larvae, not so much enlarged, below; en- 

 larged eggs above at left (original). 



three o'clock in the morning, and considers her duty 

 amply done. 



The inherited experience of ages has taught her that 

 it is best to mass them together in a pointed ellipse slightly 

 concave on the top, the eggs being little end up. The air 

 so sticks to the mass that it is impossible to wet it. Push 

 it under water and it bobs up again, light as a cork. In 

 sixteen hours the larvae come out on the under side and 

 begin a most active existence. They are the wigglers 



