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used to go there at night to dry their plants and to write their Diary, 

 adding: "The missionary had rightly observed that those insects are 

 more numerous in the lower strata of the atmosphere, within 12 to 15 

 feet from the ground". Further on they write: "As one proceeds to- 

 wards the plateau of the Andes, those insects disappear and the air one 

 breathes becomes pure at a height of 200 toises (1500 feet) mosqui- 

 toes and zancudos are no longer feared". 



Historically the mosquito is one of the insects most anciently observ- 

 ed. Aristotle and Pliny refer to its proboscis which serves both for pier- 

 cing the skin and for sucking the blood. The Greek historian Pausanias, 

 according to Taschenberg, mentions the city of Myus, in Asia Minor, 

 situated on a bay which had formerly communicated with the sea but was 

 afterwards cut off from it; when the water in the lake which was thus 

 formed ceased to be salt, such a plague of mosquitoes was developed that 

 the inhabitants had to abandon the city and betook themselves to Miletus. 

 So also in the Decades of Herrera, we read that Juan Grijalva when he 

 first discovered the coast of New Spain (Mexico), in 1518, landed with his 

 men on an islet which he named San Juan de Ulua, and they had to build 

 their huts "at the top of the highest sand-mounds which they could find 

 in order to avoid the importunity of mosquitoes." Seven days later, 

 Bernal Diez del Castillo had to seek protection in some Indian places 

 of worship,, "unable to stand the mosquitoes". Finally, in 1519, on the 

 same spot where Veracruz now stands, according to Herrera "the long- 

 legged mosquitoes and the small ones which are still worse used to worry 

 the people who went with Cortes". 



I have observed two kinds of mosquitoes in Havana since December 

 last, when I began to study those insects. One species is large, of a yellow- 

 ish colour, with thin, long legs, and without any particular markings ; 

 I suppose it must be the identical zancudo which worried Cortes' men 

 on the sandy plains of San Juan de Ulua in 1519, and the same which 

 La Sagra describes as the Culex Cubensis. The length of its body, meas- 

 ured from the root of the proboscis to the anal extremity, varies between 

 5 and 7 millimetres. This species comes out exclusively at night, generally 

 between 9 and 10 o'clock, and pursues its annoying evolutions until day- 

 break. All the specimens which I have found inside of mosquito-nets (in 

 the morning) have belonged to that species; and they remain part of the 

 day in that position digesting the blood which they have sucked. The 

 other species is the Culex mosquito, specimens of which were taken to 

 Paris by the distinguished Cuban Naturalist, Felipe Poey, in 1817 or 

 1820, and were there classified by M. Robineau Desvoidy under that name. 

 I have noticed two varieties of this species : one large, with a slight, grace- 

 ful figure, vigorous, of a dark gray color, somewhat smaller than the 

 C. Cubensis; the other only measures from 4 to 4% millimetres. I have 



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