MOSQUITOES IN GENERAL 7 



marshes and collected a considerable number of the 

 leaves of the pitcher plant {Sarracenia) filled with a solid 

 mass of ice. He brought them into the house and 

 thawed out the contents, and as a result sent Dr. Smith 

 two bottles of very lively mosquito larvse. It seems that 

 the temperature of the marshes had been 21° F. below zero 

 and everything had been frozen solid for some time. 

 Mr. Brakeley wrote that the larv?e were embedded in dif- 

 ferent parts of the ice, and that in looking through the ice 

 you could see the insects. He sent over one hundred of 

 these thawed-out larvae to Dr. Smith, who stated that 

 they reached him in good condition and that they lived, 

 moulted, and grew thereafter in his laboratory. Adults 

 issued in March and proved to be Culex pungens. The 

 great numbers in which these larvae were found, suggests 

 to Dr. Smith that larval hibernation must be extremely 

 common, not only in New Jersey and in pitcher plants, 

 but elsewhere and in other accumulations of water. The 

 observations are of extreme interest and importance. 



How Long can the Larvae Live Out of Water? 



The fact that these insects remained dormant when 

 frozen up in ice for an indefinite period, from the obser- 

 vations of Mr. Brakeley, might at first seem to indicate 

 that the theory which has been advanced, that when their 

 mud-bottomed breeding-places dry up they remain alive 

 in the earth, is in a measure substantiated. But, in 

 reality, it has little bearing upon summer temperature 

 conditions. Experiments which I have tried on a small 



