2 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 



the summer months in the Northern fStates is undoubtedly Gulex territans, 

 which is the only species breeding abundantly in a certain class of fresh-water 

 marshes and pools at that season. We now know that this species does not annoy 

 man (in spite of its name), and are enabled to state that such fresh-water 

 marshes and ponds are not breeding-places of noxious mosquitoes. 



Therefore, realizing the imperfect character of our knowledge and especially 

 the very great need of a competent monograph of the species of Culicidge of 

 North and Central America and the West Indies, both from the biological and 

 the sanitary points of view, application was made, in April, 1903, to the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington, for a grant which should enable the prepa- 

 ration of a monograph to include all possible information concerning all mos- 

 quitoes of the geographical regions just mentioned. 



The grant requested was made by the Trustees of the Institution in January, 

 1903, and organization work was at once begun. It was at first expected that the 

 monograph could be completed in three years, and the grants made by the In- 

 stitution covered that period. At the expiration of the third year, however, it 

 was found that the material was by no means complete. Too much reliance had 

 been placed upon the promises of volunteer observers, and important regions 

 were, for this reason, not properly covered. The workers engaged in the prepara- 

 tion of the monograph were not content to publish the material accumulated, 

 since it was their earnest desire to make the work as complete as possible and as 

 valuable as possible to biologists and to sanitarians. The investigations were, 

 therefore, continued during 1906, 1907, and 1908, partly by the help of funds 

 appropriated to the U. S. Department of Agriculture by Congress for the in- 

 vestigation of insects affecting the health of man and animals, partly by the 

 assistance of the Isthmian Canal Commission, partly by the help of volunteer 

 observers in the West Indies and Central America, and partly at the expense of 

 two of the authors (Dr. Dyar and Mr. Knab). While it is realized that the 

 present work is incomplete, the additions gained by the work of the last few 

 years has surely more than doubled its value. 



In planning the work in the early months of 1903, it was decided to secure 

 local observers advantageously situated in the different faunal areas of the 

 United States, and to compensate them for observations during the summer 

 months, in the course of which each should make as complete a collection as 

 possible of the mosquitoes of the region in which he was located, should rear 

 each species in all its different stages, and should submit all specimens and com- 

 plete notes, with sketches, at the completion of the season. During the first 

 year there were employed for this purpose Miss Isabel McCracken, of Stanford 

 University, a graduate student and assistant of Prof. V, L. Kellogg; Mr. Fred- 

 erick Knab, of Chicopee, Massachusetts (one of the present authors) ; Mr. 0. 

 A. Johannsen, of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Mrs. E. G. Hinds, at 

 Victoria, Texas; Mr. John R. Taylor, of Las Animas Hospital, Havana, Cuba; 

 Dr. H. G. Dyar, of the U. S. National Museum (one of the present authors), at 

 Kaslo, British Columbia; Mr. T. H. Coffin, of the Johns Hopkins Medical 

 School, in the Bahama Islands; and Mr. Kenneth Taylor, at Minneapolis, 

 Minnesota. 



