MOSQUITOES. 183 



mentioned, they also pass their early stages in water, and 

 also, jjerhaps, in damp and shady ground. Here the adults 

 are very numerous, though winds may carry them also far from 

 their place of birth. They subsist on vegetable juices,* but 

 if opportunity offers the females attack and suck the blood 

 of all kinds of animals. Members of this family are recog- 

 nized by their long body, by the fourteen-jointed, filiform and 

 very plumose feelers, especially in the males; by the bulging 

 thorax, by the narrow, cylindrical abdomen and thin legs, 

 elongated narrow wings, lying flat on the body during rest, 

 and by their humming sound during flight. The wnngs are 

 covered, especially along the veins, w4th scales, some of 

 w^hich are shown in fig. 154. At least 30 species of these 

 bloodthirsty insects are found in the United States, and some 

 of the names molest us, musicus, damnosus^ exci'ucians, provocans^ 

 territans and others they received show that their powers of 

 tormenting man and beast were fully realized by the authors. 

 Dr. A. S. Packard, in his interesting book "Our Common In- 

 sects," describes the mosquito and its mouth-parts in the 

 following poetical words: "as she leaps off from her light 

 bark, the cast chrysalis skin of her early life beneath the 

 waters, and sails away in the sun-light, her velvety wings 

 fringed with silken hairs, and her neatly bodiced trim figure 

 (though her nose is rather salient, considering that it is half 

 as long as her entire body), present a beauty and grace of 

 form and movement quite unsurpassed b3^ her dipterous 

 allies. She draws near and softly alights upon the hand of 

 the charmed beholder, subdues her trumpeting notes, folds 

 her wrings noiselessly upon her back, daintily sets dow^n one 

 foot after the other, and with an eagerness chastened by the 

 most refined delicacy for the feelings of her victim, and Avith 

 the air of Velpeau redivivus, drives through crushed and 

 bleeding capillaries, shrinking nerves and injured tissues, a 

 many-bladed lancet of marvellous fineness, of wonderful 

 complexitj^ and fitness. While she is engorging herself with 

 our blood, we will examine under the microscope the mos- 

 quito's mouth. The head (fig. 152) is rounded, with the two 



* When sugaring- for moths, a method often employed b3' entomologists to col- 

 lect large niimbers of owlet-moths, the bait is frequently covered with mosquitoes, 

 all busily eng'aged in sucking this sweet material. 



