LETTER FROM CAPT. MACAU LEY. 133 



tinge. I am not an entomologist, I am sorry to say, so I 

 cannot describe the " bng " more exactly. 



From Mr. Heistand's enthusiastic description of these 

 mosquito hawks I was curious to see how they caught 

 their food. I noticed that they flew in an irregular kind 

 of skirmish line, moved slowly, and every now and then 

 made what he described as short " dabs " at apparently 

 nothing. Mr, Heistand said that "each one of these dabs 

 means a mosquito." It was curious to see how deliberate 

 they were about it, and how fairly aligned this skirmish 

 line was. They appeared somewhere about 11 A. M., 

 and when I went into the post later I crossed the parade 

 ground and saw detachments of about half a dozen flying 

 slowly about. They stayed at ab(uit an average of three 

 feet from the ground. I do not know how late they 

 kept it up or how early they began. They stayed until 

 all the mosquitoes appeared to be gone. I intended 

 catching one and chloroforming it for examination — I 

 even made a net for the purpose — but I hadn't the heart 

 to do it, because of the business like way they made life 

 bearable. I do not remember how long they stayed — 

 maybe a week — but I know that at the end of three days 

 the change was so great that head nets were no longer 

 needed, and existence was bearable once more. At the 

 end of September of that year I was ordered to Poplar 

 River, where the mosquitoes had been just as bati, and I 

 have a dim recollection of hearing of the appearance of 

 these mosquito hawks. The following year we had a few 

 mosquitoes, but as the summer was unusually dry, even 

 for that comparatively arid country, they were few and 

 did not last long. The next year they appeared and 

 were very bad again, but I was ordered to the Indian 



