ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE CULICID^ 239 



additions and the unearthing" of many descriptions which 

 had not been accessible to him, brought the number of 

 descriptions collated in the first edition of this handbook to 

 a total of 242 species, of which 18 belong to the genus 

 Megarhina, 30 to Anopheles, 3 to Psorophora, 3 to 

 Sabethes, 160 to Culex, 13 to Mdes, 12 to Corethra, and 

 3 to Mochlonyx. 



Of these 72 were European, out of which 24 were 

 recorded from England ; 20 from continental, and 29 from 

 the islands of Asia; 41 from North, and 36 from South 

 America ; and 29 Australian. No better illustration of the 

 small attention that had hitherto been devoted to the group 

 can be given than the fact that but one species had been 

 originally described from India, and that but four were 

 recorded as having been found within its limits, putting aside 

 the species and records appearing for the first time. It was 

 obvious on comparing the various original descriptions then 

 brought together for the first time, that on the one hand, 

 many of the descriptions were so inadequate that they might 

 easily correspond in the few particulars mentioned to a 

 whole series of perfectly distinct species, while on the other, 

 it was equally clear that many must be mere synonyms. 

 It is, however, most dangerous to dabble in questions of 

 synonymy unless one can compare the actual types, or at 

 the least has available a large collection of locally-taken 

 specimens, and in reality, no collection of the family worthy 

 of the name existed ; and I therefore, with one or two 

 exceptions, confined myself to a guarded acceptance of the 

 efforts of others in this direction, most of which I may 

 remark, would, it appears, have better been left unnoticed, 

 as they have generally turned out to be wide of the mark, 

 and to have merely added to the existing confusion. 



While I strongly suspected that many of the names 

 enumerated in the systematic portion of the book were 

 nothing more than redescriptions of species already known, 

 it was equally obvious that the determination of the gnat 

 fauna of vast regions of the globe was practically untouched, 

 and that, as a necessary corollary, a large number of 

 unknown species must remain to be discovered and des- 



