FAMILY CULICID^. 



(Mosquitoes.) (Plate 41.) 

 Characteristics. — Mosquitoes are slender insects 

 with gauzy wings and long projecting proboscis 

 (consisting of six stylets ; these are held in a sheath. 

 Tlie stylets can be placed together, and a puncture 

 is then made with the tips, while the fluid is sucked 

 up — either plant-juices or blood. (Plate 41, Fig. 1.) 

 Thus the mouth of the mosquito is a piercing and 

 sucking apparatus. The wings are membranous, 

 and along the nervures or veins are delicate scales 

 which are really modified hairs; there is a fringe 

 of fine, soft hairs on the back margin of the wings. 

 These structures can be seen by placing a wing 

 under the microscope. (Plate 41, Fig. 8.) The 

 antennae are long, with whorls of hairs, which are 

 very long and plumose in the male but shorter in 

 the female. (Plate 41, Fig. 1 c.) Food: The female 

 mosquito which we know so well as a blood-suck- 

 ing insect, is said to be content with vegetable 

 juices should the blood of animals be unavailable. 

 The male mosquito does not attack animals; in 

 some species the male is said to be unable to feed, 

 Avhile in others it is said to live on plant-juices. 

 The palpi of mosquitoes are very long in most 

 species. 



The eggs (Plate 41, Fig. 7) of the mosquito are 

 laid in little clusters on the surface of the water 



