FIELD BOOK OF PONDS AND STREAMS 



but of daintier build and of generally less offensive habits, 

 though the family includes the punkies, abundant along moun- 

 tain streams in the Adirondacks and White Mountains and 

 sometimes at the seashore. 



Adults. — Adult chironomids are seldom half an inch long 

 (Fig. 228), sometimes confused with mosquitoes but a hand- 

 lens will show that the wing-veins of mosquitoes are covered 

 with opalescent scales (Fig. 227) while those of the chironomid 





Fig. 227. — Wings of i , chironomid midge with bare 

 wing-veins; 2, mosquito with wing-veins covered 

 by scales. 



midges are bare or merely hairy (Fig. 227). When they are 

 resting on a surface chironomids hold their front feet up, 

 mosquitoes keep their front feet down and their hind feet up. 

 In numbers and distribution the family Chironomida is a very 

 successful group; like the related family, CulicidcE, the mos- 

 quitoes, they are known from Greenland to the tropics and 

 there are more than twelve hundred species, most of them so 

 similar that they can be distinguished only by specialists. 



Eggs.— Some of them lay their eggs in strings of jelly coiled 

 and snarled on stones in swift flowing water (Fig. 23,) ; others 

 deposit them near the surface of the water in quiet pools. 

 The eggs themselves are white, usually oval, pointed at both 

 ends, and though each egg is a mere dot to the eye they some- 

 times occur in such masses that their total bulk runs into 



quarts. 



290 



