22 MOSQUITOES OF NOETH AMERICA 



graphia) and stating that the mosquito larva holds its position at the surface of 

 the water because its tail never becomes wet, supposing it to be oily. He de- 

 scribes the transformation to the pupa stage, carefully describes the pupa stage 

 and the transformation to adult, and gives a long description of the adult, in- 

 cluding the mouthparts, determining correctly the number of setae in the 

 proboscis. He thought, however, erroneously, that in biting the mosquito was 

 able to protrude the setae from the end of the sheath, without flexion of the latter. 



P. Bonanni, in a curious work entitled " Observationes Circa Viventia," etc., 

 Rome, 1691, in which he considers the methods of reproduction of many dif- 

 ferent kinds of lower animals with especial reference to spontaneous generation, 

 gives very good figures of the larva, pupa, and adult, and of the wing-scales, of 

 a Culex. The drawing of the adult is obviously traced from Swammerdam and 

 printed reversed. The larva and the pupa are different from the Swammerdam 

 drawings, and may have been drawn originally from specimens under obser- 

 vation. 



P. P. San Gallo, " Esperienze intorno alia generazione dele zanzare " (Ephem. 

 Acad. nat. Curios., 1712, cent. 1 and 2, pp. 220-223, Tab. 1), gives some atten- 

 tion to the writings of earlier authors, and quotes Pliny, Ammianus Marcellinus, 

 the Arabian doctor Zacharias Ben Muahammed Ibn Mahmud, and Francisco 

 Eedi. He gives an account of observations made by himself in June, 1679, 

 upon mosquitoes in breeding- jars. He describes the larva, figures the male and 

 female adults, and also a larva which is very poorly done. 



D. Reviglias, in an article entitled " De Culicum Generatione," in the Acta 

 Acad. Nat. Curios., 1737, T, 4, Obs. 3, p. 420, gives a study of the mosquito's 

 beak, and figures very poorly the adults. He gives an illustration of a larva 

 which is obviously not a mosquito larva, but that of a dermestid beetle which 

 had found its way under the glass in which the female mosquito had been 

 confined. 



In 1734 Reaumur began the publication of his " Memoires pour servir a 

 I'Histoire des Insectes," and in his fourth volume (1738), has, as his thirteenth 

 memoir (pp. 573-636), his famous " Histoire des Cousins " in which he describes 

 the entire life-history and structure of Culex pipiens with a wealth of detail 

 that is almost the despair of modern naturalists — in fact, few modern works 

 even approach it, if we except Lownes's classical study of the anatomy of the 

 blow-fly. The observations of Reaumur were so full, and his authority was ac- 

 cepted as so all-satisfying, that the publication of this memoir practically put a 

 stop, for a hundred and fifty years, to all further studies of the aspects of mos- 

 quito life. The general works published in that period derived their informa- 

 tion concerning mosquitoes from the standard observations of Reaumur, and 

 this, it may parenthetically be stated, holds for a number of the other studies 

 made of common species of insects by the famous French author. And this 

 confidence in him has in the main been fully justified, although here and there a 

 different interpretation is possible in the light of later knowledge, especially in 

 physics and in microscopic interpretation. While it is not strange that his 

 accurate observations on the transformations and structure should have been 



