68 Journal New York Entomological Society. |Voi.xiv. 



the trials made with females in captivity, both captured and bred ones, 

 only one sucked blood. Culex fatigans shows itself much inferior to 

 Stegomyia in intelligence and this agrees well with the idea that, like 

 other hsematophagous insects, this mosquito is principally found in 

 relation with a definite vertebrate host. The author believes that 

 primitively Culex fatigans was less partial to the human species than 

 to certain domestic animals and his suspicion points mostly to its 

 being an inquiline of poultry-houses. Is it not possible that in this 

 evident intellectual diversity of these two species of mosquito the 

 diversity of their respective primitive hosts is reflected? Surely no 

 one will dispute that it requires a more expert mosquito to persecute 

 man than poultry, cats or dogs. 



Discussing the original home of Stegomyia faseiata, the author ex- 

 presses his belief that it is of African origin. He bases this idea 

 largely upon a study of the geographical distribution of the genus 

 Stegomyia by means of the data gathered from Theobald's Monograph. 

 Of the 2 1 known species of the genus, eleven, or more than half, are 

 African, while only four are American. The author fails, however, to 

 take into account the fact that our knowledge of the mosquito fauna 

 of tropical America is extremely fragmentary. At least three addi- 

 tional species of Stegomyia are now known from the West Indian region, 

 which, with the neighboring coasts, most likely represents the home of 

 the American Stegomyias.* Stegomyia faseiata is now so widely dis- 

 persed that a study of the species itself will hardly furnish a clue to its 

 original habitat. The author believes that Stegomyia faseiata, along 

 with other afflictions such as filariasis and the sand flea (Sareopsyi/a 

 penetrans L. ), has followed in the wake of the slave trade probably in 

 quite early times. Of course it is quite as likely that the reverse is 

 true and that the species has been disseminated from America. The 

 whole question is inseparably bound up with that of the origin of 

 yellow fever and perhaps the history of this disease will furnish proper 

 data to settle the question. The author touches upon this part of the 

 subject in Chapter III, where he resumes the discussion of the probable 



* Since the above was written these three species referred to have been described 

 by Mr. D. W. Coquillett. Two of them, together with Stegomyia sexlineata Theob. , 

 are placed by Mr. Coquillett in a new genus Gymnometopa (Proc. Ent. Soc. Wash., 

 VII, 183). It should be noted that it is highly doubtful that the genus Stegomyia 

 represents a distinct and homogeneous group. Most of the recently made Culicid 

 genera are based upon very unsatisfactory characters and do not represent natural 

 groups, as is clearly apparent from a study of the larva;. 



