26 



Durint;' winter and early spring, Common Gnats are often to be found 

 in swarms on the roofs of cellars, where their presence at that season of 

 the year sometimes occasions a good deal of surprise. This species 

 is often a troublesome blood-sucker, and, as most people know to their 

 cost, even a solitar)- Gnat is capable of causing considerable 

 annoyance in a bedroom at night. As regards his experience of the 

 Common Gnat in Scotland, Colonel Yerbury says : — " This is another 

 early pest, which was in numbers at Nairn and Brodie in the middle 

 of Ma)-, 1905 ; eight or ten specimens could be seen at one time 

 sitting on one's knickerbocker stockings." 



Culex pipiens occurs throughout Continental Europe, and also in 

 Malta, Algeria, Madeira, Teneriffe, and North America. 



Genu.s 

 GRABHAMIA, Theobald. 



Grabhamia dorsalis, Mg. 



{Culex dorsalis, Verrall, ' List of British Diptera,' 2nd Ed. 

 (1901), p. 12.) 



Plate 9. 



This species, which is quite the most handsome of our British 

 mosquitoes, may easily be recognised by its bright tawny thora.x 

 marked with two longitudinal stripes of cream-coloured scales which 

 meet behind, and by the striking pattern of the abdominal markings, 

 which are clearly shown in the plate. G. dorsalis makes its appear- 

 ance in August and September, when it is often locally abundant in 

 some of the suburbs of London. At present it is impossible to say 

 anything as to the distribution of this species in the British islands, 

 since all the British localities whence it has hitherto been recorded 

 are in England, for the most part in the southern counties. 

 Theobald, however {op. cit.. Vol. II. (1901), p. 18), mentions its 

 occurrence in Wyre Forest, Worcestershire (where it was taken by 



