326 Fiftieth Report on the State Museum 



The Female only, Bites. 

 I would not bethought as reflecting in the slightest — even through 

 innuendo — upon the gentler sex — "Heaven's best gift to man" — 

 without whose presence Eden was incomplete ; but a proper treatment 

 of my topic and inexorable science demands of me the statement to which 

 the use of the feminine pronoun has been leading me up and preparing 

 the way, to wit : all the annoyances, pains, tortures, which the world 

 endures from the mosquito, is solely chargeable upon Madame Culex. I 

 cheerfully admit that the natural taste of Mr. Culex may be equally 

 blood thirsty, but alas, poor creature ! he has been left without the means 

 of gratifying a sanguinary desire. He is, therefore, compelled to forego 

 the exquisite relish of the royal repasts in which his consort finds so great 

 delight, and be content with the juices of plants and the nectar of lilies, 

 and of other flowers to which he is particularly addicted. He has not 

 been favored by nature with that delicate and complicated piece of 

 apparatus which is so admirably adapted, as has been graphically expressed, 

 to being driven " through crushed and bleeding capillaries, shrinking 

 nerves and lacerated tissues." With a becoming humility, therefore, he 

 rarely visits us in our apartments, or even obtrudes his presence upon us 

 when we seek his haunts; and few of us know of the branching plumes, 

 fit for a knight, that adorn his front and make him far more beautiful 

 than his unpretentious mate. 



The Biting Organs. 



By this time you may desire to be told something of the character of 

 the biting organs of which the effects have been related to you. 



Let me preface by stating that the mouth-parts of insects consist, 

 normally, of six pieces, viz., four lateral pieces consisting of a pair of upper 

 jaws denominated mandibles, a pair of lower jaws named maxilht (which 

 in biting insects that feed on solid matter move horizontally), an upper 

 lip known as the labnim and the lower lip, the labiutn — these two cover- 

 ing the mouth from above and beneath. Some of these bear appendages 

 which need not at the present be referred to. These organs, of course^ 

 are greatly modified in the different orders of insects, to adapt them to 

 the different methods of taking their food — whether fitted for gnawing or 

 tearing in pieces solid substances, as in the beetles — transformed into a 

 sucker with expanded disc for sipping its food as in the house-fly — 

 extended into a long, flexible tube coiled up in a spiral when at rest, for 

 drinking the nectar from the bottom of tubular flowers, as in the butter- 

 flies, or forming a long, firm, jointed proboscis for thrusting into plants or 



