21 H 



THK ENTOMOLOOIST S KECORD. 



On May 16th at a meeting of the Lancashire and Cheshire Ento- 

 mological Society held at the Johnston Laboratory, Liverpool 

 Tniversity, Major Ross gave a most instructive and interesting lecture 

 on the connection between malaria and mosquitoes, copiously illus- 

 trated by lantern slides. He began with a series of maps, showing the 

 relative prevalence of malaria in various parts of the world, and then 

 gave statistics from India, from which it appears that 40 per cent, of 

 the native children are infected with malaria at one year old, and 60 

 per cent, at two years ; after that the percentage gradually decreases 

 until complete immunity ensues, and the parasite is rarely found in 

 adult natives. This parasite is a minute jelly-like speck resembling 

 an Amaeba and lives inside the corpuscles of the blood. Bursting, it 

 throws out spores — usually nine in number — into the blood at regular 

 intervals, together with a minute speck of poison; this causes a rise in 

 temperature and the profuse perspiration which follows carries the 

 poison off. The regular recurrence of this process causes the regularity 

 of the periods at which malarial fevei- comes on, the different varieties 

 of fever -quartan, tertian, black water, etc. — being due to different 

 species of parasites. It is, however, necessary that the parasite should 

 be transmitted from one human being to another by an insect, a female 

 gnat, or mosquito, for it is only the female that bites. A day or two 

 after the insect has sucked the blood of an infected person, the parasites 

 have travelled into its tissues, and, after taking about nine days to 

 mature, burst, scattering thread-like spores into the mostjuito's blood. 

 These threads work their work into the fly's salivary glands, and 

 remain there until they have an opportunity of passing together with 

 the saliva into human blood, when the mosquito perpetrates her next 

 bite. The species of Anojilifics are by no means all harmful ; those that 

 cause malaria can be always distinguished by the black spots along the 

 anterior nervures of the wings, the usual species being A. costalh and 

 A. fiincstiis. Their eggs are canoe-shaped. The larvae breed in shalloAV 

 pools of stagnant water, floating flat upon the surface, and feed on 

 ('(iiifen-ac. They have no breathing-tul)e and can thus be easily 

 distinguished from the larva- of our commoner gnats which belong to 

 the genera ( 'idc.r and SU'iionnjla, and hang head downwards in the 

 water with a long breathing- tube projected upwards to the surface. 

 T'he larv* of the latter insects i)reed in tubs, pots, and other vessels 

 lying close to houses. Since the pools were drained and filled up at 

 Ismalia, a town of 6000 inhabitants, the cases of malaria have fallen 

 from 2000 to 200 per annum, and these are nearly all relapses, as only 

 ten actually fresh cases were reported last year. 



We owe an apology to the author, Mr. George T. Jiethune-Baker, 

 of " A revision of the Amblypodia group of butterflies of the family 

 Lycfenidse,"" for not having noticed his valuable paper before. The 

 group is divided into six genera — Suri'iidra. Iraota, Aiiihh/podia, Ma/iu- 

 thala, '/'liu'liiha, and Ar/Kijuild. We suspect that these divisions are 

 altogether inadccpiate to obtain a thorough grip of the more detailed 

 phylogeny within the Amblypodids, and one surmises that most, if not 

 all, of the genei'a usckI are really of tribal value. To say that because 

 all the British Vanessid species fall so naturally into a group that 

 " even a tyro can recognise them as Vanessids," even partial reason is 



*" A Revision of the Amblypodia t^roupof butterflies of the family LyciEiiidai," 

 by George T. Bethune-Baker, P'.L.S.. F.Z.S., etc. [The TruusartionK of the Zoo- 

 lopirdl Society <)'' Lovdon. xvii.. pt. 1. pp. l-l.'jH. pi. iv. .\iigust. 1903.) 



