MOSQUITO BIOLOGY 217 



water, much as in Culex pungens, but the mass is smaller, containing a 

 less number of eggs and is less regularly elliptical, more angular. It 

 floats less on the surface, the middle eggs being nearly half submerged. 

 The sculpture and color of the individual eggs are also different. The 

 newly hatched larva at once takes up the usual feeding position. This is 

 essentially as in Culex, but the body is held more flatly, more parallel to 

 the surface, yet below the surface film. Consequently, though feeding as 

 Culex, the larvae resemble Anopheles at a casual glance and were several 

 times at first mistaken for them. The larvae are fond of resting below 

 the leaves of the Lemna, where they remain with the air-tube penetrat- 

 ing the surface and feed, often with a rotary motion of the body on the 

 air-tube as an axis. Occasionally they bend up to feed at the surface. 

 They are not timid and often a considerable commotion of the water is 

 necessary to send them to the bottom. The head may be partly rotated 

 on the neck, but the habit is not so completely developed nor so frequent 

 as in Anopheles, which regularly feeds with the heads inverted. It has an 

 elongate, dark brown head with a contrasting pale body, the hairs of 

 the anterior abdominal segments markedly longer than those of the suc- 

 ceeding ones. Of the local species (at Bellport), it most suggests the 

 species of Anopheles, as above noted. The long anterior hairs assist in 

 the deceptive appearance. There seem to be four larval stages, the last 

 three being essentially alike, except for the successively larger size. This 

 is shown best by the head as in Lepidopterous larvae. The head gradu- 

 ally becomes paler, being black in the young larva and brown in the 

 large ones. The pupa resembles that of Culex, but is very small and has 

 unusually long air-tubes. The species seem to breed continuously all 

 summer, preferring warm, stagnant pools of some size, containing 

 Spirogyra." 



At Lahaway I found the egg boats near the shallow edge of a large 

 fish pond and the larvae among the vegetation along the shallow edge 

 of a lily pond in late June. Larvae also were found in Cadwalader Park, 

 Trenton, August 5 ; at Metedeconk, September 23, and at Irvington, 

 September 15. It is what is called a local breeder, being found in about 

 the same places each year and always in permanent bodies of water. 



The resemblance to Anopheles with a long breathing tube is so strong 

 that I could scarcely persuade myself when I first saw the larva that it 

 did not belong to that genus. 



