18 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 



" Everything which moves about the head or the hands helps to chase the 

 insects away. ' The more you move, the less you are bitten,' say the mission- 

 aries. The zancudo buzzes a long time before alighting, but when it has gained 

 confidence and has once commenced to insert its sucker and to suck blood one 

 can touch its wings without frightening it. At this time it holds its two hind 

 legs in the air, and if, without bothering it, one lets it suck its fill there is no 

 swelling and no pain. We have often tried this experiment upon ourselves in the 

 valley of the Eio de la Magdalena on the advice of the natives. One asks oneself 

 whether the insect only injects the poison at the moment when it is frightened 

 away, or if it sucks back the poison when it is allowed to suck as much as it will. 

 I am inclined to the latter opinion, for, in allowing Culex cyanopterus to peace- 

 ably bite the back of my hand, I noticed that the pain, very strong in the begin- 

 ning, diminished as the insect continued to pump up the blood. It ceased 

 absolutely at the moment when the sucking was finished. I tried also the experi- 

 ment of wounding my skin with a pin and of rubbing the puncture with crushed 

 gnats, but no inflammation followed. The irritating liquid of the nemocerous 

 insects, in which chemists have not yet recognized any acid property, is con- 

 tained, as with the ants and other hymenopterous insects, in special glands, and 

 it is probably too dilute and in consequence too weak if one rubs the skin with 

 all of the crushed insect." 



If, in the above account, one has kept in mind that by the word " mosquito " 

 Humboldt designated Simulium, it will be seen that he clearly distinguished 

 between the blood-sucking flies belonging to different families. 



In the account which follows, of the abundance of mosquitoes in southern 

 Eussia, by Jaeger, the Culicidge and Simuliidas were evidently not differen- 

 tiated. Thus the statement of the mosquitoes entering the noses, mouths and 

 ears of cattle and of causing the death of many of these animals, clearly applies 

 to the Simuliidae, the ravages of which, in that country, are well known. The 

 account is nevertheless of interest. 



" When traveling some years ago in the country of the Czernomorzi, or Cos- 

 sacks of the Black Sea, we observed before each house of the different slanitzas 

 or villages, of the Cossacks, large heaps of half dried manure ignited and smok- 

 ing, which our driver informed us was for the purpose of keeping off the mos- 

 quitoes. Toward evening, on a very hot June day, we ascended the right bank 

 of the muddy and slowly-running Eiver Kuban, on the left bank of which the 

 independent Circassia stretched out before us, when suddenly swarms of small 

 mosquitoes covered us, our servant, and driver, and horses, lighting upon us in 

 lumps an inch thick, and, in spite of all the covering we could hastily throw 

 over us, tormenting us excessively with their bites. 



" On the road, at a distance of every four or five versts (three or four English 

 miles), we found a military post of about a dozen Cossacks, keeping themselves 

 and their horses under ground, except one sentinel, who was standing upon a 

 scaffold twelve feet high, in order to watch any inimical movements of the 

 Circassians, to repulse their attacks, and, in case of one, to give notice of it to 

 the two nearest posts by means of the ancient Persian telegraph, viz. : by igniting 

 a bundle of straw, which was then fastened to the top of a high pole and elevated. 

 At midnight our misery reached its climax. Though covered with a wide cloak, 

 the mosquitoes entered every opening, and inflicted upon us such painful wounds 

 that our faces were so swollen we could scarcely recognize one another. To our 

 joy a large camp-fire was seen at some distance, which, according to the driver's 

 assurance, was the post-station, where fresh horses could be had. We arrived at 



