50 INSECTS INJURIOUS IN 1902. 
points, deep water would be a very undesirable feature. As the 
human family know only too well it appears to reserve its energy 
for use on them. The adult, at least the female does all the bit- 
ing, the mouth of the male not being adapted to piercing the skin 
and sucking blood. An Italian worker, however, claims that in 
two species, the males also suck blood. 
As to the length of life of the adult Mosquito, no general 
statement can be made, several having been kept alive for three 
weeks; evidently the natural life of the perfect insect lasts from 
8 days to 3-weeks. This statement is only a general one; climatic 
conditions probably have great influence upon the duration of life. 
Though our pretty lakes are not infested, their irregular shore 
lines where little shal'ow pools occur are ideal places, and where 
ever swampy land is found in the State, there as the reader prob- 
ably knows, mosquitos occur in countless numbers. Further, only 
a handful of water being necessary for the development of several 
hundred individuals the following places, very apt to be over- 
looked, afford fertile sources for infection; drains, ditches, shal- 
low ponds, puddles, post holes, depressions under sidewalks, wa- 
tering troughs where water remains unchanged for some time, 
muddy holes made by the feet of cattle about watering troughs, 
water tanks, fountain basins where the use of the fountain is not 
and in fields and meadows, marshy places in meadows, uncovered ~ 
sufficient to keep the water in motion and renewed, old basins, tin 
cans, bottles, etc., in rubbish heaps; a broken bowl or an old 
coffee pot lying unnoticed under a bush may be the source of 
hundreds. The fact that one-half pint of water in a cow’s track 
in the meadow, may, if the water remains there ten days, or even 
if it almost all dries up and is then renewed by a slight shower, 
be the source of several hundred mosquitoes probably accounts for 
so many of these insects in land where apparently no water is 
present. Furthermore, the writer has a suspicion that inasmuch 
as water is not absolutely essential to the vitality of the egg, our 
mosquitoes like the Salt Marsh Mosquito, may lay their eggs in 
localities where their instinct tells them water will come later. 
Out of twenty-five or more species known to occur in the United 
States we find in Minnesota Culex consobrinus, C. impiger, C. 
pungens, Anopheles quadrumaculata, and probably others not yet 
described. 
