60 Journaf. New York Entomological Societv. [Vol. xiv. 



upon the species in Para. It is excessively abundant in houses and 

 hovers over persons' heads in troops of four to ten or more. It bites 

 from sunrise until evening and a person is bitten at least 50 or 100 

 times a day. Seeking out any uncovered part it inflicts its painful 

 bite which afterward swells. There is not a minute of rest from day- 

 break to nightfall ; it is impossible to defend oneself against them 

 and soon face, neck, hands and legs are covered with burning swollen 

 points. The author exclaims, " I do not know of another factor in 

 this city so hurtful and actually pernicious to intellectual work, to 

 scientific study and investigation in the quiet of the cabinet and 

 laboratory as this execrable creature which is called Stegomyia fas- 

 datal" Culex fatigans follows in importance and insupportability 

 as a nocturnal complement to the diurnal Stegomyia. Surprising, but 

 perhaps after all not far from the truth, is the author's statement that 

 he considers the nocturnal habit exceptional and that the majority of 

 mosquitoes are diurnal. According to Dr. Lutz, Culex fatigans is the 

 common nocturnal mosquito throughout Brazil, found everywhere and 

 biting only at night. At Para the abundance of this mosquito is simply 

 astonishing ; in the suburb of Nazareth it assaults the houses in clouds 

 during the first hours of the night and fairly throws itself against the 

 person. The hum of myriads of these mosquitoes, flying and in court- 

 ship, in a dark room is enough to make one's hair stand on end. " I 

 am apprehensive each time I hear this odious music, when I think of 

 the sad consequences to health, of which, in my firm conviction, it is 

 the fatal precursor and messenger!" The writer here alludes to 

 Culex fatigans as the transmitter of filariasis. While it is mostly 

 the black race and its crosses that is persecuted by this disease there is 

 great danger to everybody at Para where black and white sleep with- 

 out mosquito-bars in the same rooms, infested with this mosquito. 



The fourth of the above-denounced mosquitoes is Tccniorhynchus 

 fasciolaius. While the author agrees with Dr. Lutz that this is a 

 genuine swamp mosquito he adds that at Pani it enters the houses at 

 twilight. Its bite is painful and it has a voracious disposition, yet it is 

 ingenuous and phlegmatic, if not to say entirely stupid. The speci- 

 mens observed at Para differ from the colored figure in Theobald's 

 work by their darker color, a circumstance which has already been 

 noted by that author. 



The biology of mosquitoes is next treated in a popular way and 

 the differences in the early stages of Culex, Stegomyia and Anopheles 



