32 DRAGON FLIES VS. MOSQUITOES. 



To suppose that the tormenting of man occupies any con- 

 siderable time in the mosquito economy is certainly a mis- 

 take. It is only the female (Plate II., Fig. 5) which can 

 thus make our lives miserable. In repeated examinations 

 of hundreds of individual specimens we have failed to find 

 a single male with a distended abdomen containing human 

 blood, and subsequent microscopical study has shown the 

 male proboscis incapable of drawing blood. Dr. Bona- 

 via,^ in a readable article entitled "Do Mosquitoes Live on 

 Animal or Vegetable Juices?" relates the following: '*0n 

 one occasion I put a plant in a pot in my room. At night 

 I happened to pass by it with a lamp, and found its leaves 

 covered Avith mosquitoes, who appeared to me to be suck- 

 ing the juice of the plant. Plere, I think, I had discov- 

 ered a clue to the real nature of the mosquito. I think 

 that naturally the perfect insect lives by sucking the juices 

 of plants by night. * * * With the foregoing clues 

 I think now the statements of travelers and sportsmen 

 in the jungles of Burmali, and of trappers in the back- 

 woods of America and Canada, become intelligible." 



Dr. Dimmock -^ has, by keeping a male mosquito 

 several days, had the satisfaction of seeing it drink freely 

 from a moist cloth. We have observed a male to alight 

 several times on a hand held perfectly motionless, and 

 after searching for some unfound desideratum, fly off to a 

 water pitcher and dip its proboscis in a drop on the rim. 

 We have also noticed a female on a molasses jug imbibe 

 freely. These habits, -and others too numerous to here 

 detail, as well as the fact that myriads of these pests are 

 born in such localities as never to enable them to find 

 human victims, seem to show that bloodsucking is an 

 acquired taste to the female alone ; and even to her it is a 



