10 



the observations by Mr. Schwarz, of this office, at Corpus Christi. 

 Tex., could be practically duplicated by many persons. He showed 

 that when the wind blows from any other direction than south " hun- 

 dreds of thousands of millions" of mosquitoes blow in upon the town. 

 Great herds of hundreds of horses run before the mosquitoes in order 

 to get to the water. With a change of wind, however, the mosquitoes 

 blow away. Many regions, especially along the seacoast, have been 

 actually rendered uninhabitable by the abundance of mosquitoes, and 

 they have been a serious drawback to the settlement of many other- 

 wise advantageous and fertile localities. 



Dr. Otto Lugger reports, on pages 216, 217 of his annual report for 

 1896 as entomologist to the Minnesota State Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, an interesting series of observations to determine the number 

 of mosquitoes which may be bred in- an ordinary rain barrel. The 

 observations were made at St. Anthony Park, Minnesota. On eluly 6, 

 1896, the water in one barrel was filtered and was found to contain 

 17,259 eggs, larvae, and pup^. On July 22, 1896, by a similar proc- 

 ess, 19,110 mosquitoes were counted. When we consider that at 

 least twelve generations may breed in a summer it is obvious, from 

 Dr. Lugger's account, that a n(nghV)orhood may be well supplied 

 from one neglected rain-water barrel. 



Alaskan and other far northern, mosquitoes. — Since the opening up 

 of the gold fields in Alaska and the great influx of miners and traders, 

 knowledge of the abundance and ferocity of the Alaskan mosquitoes 

 has become widespread, and surveying parties from the United States 

 Coast and Geodetic Survey and the United States Geological Survey 

 in starting for Alaska for their summer's work are in the habit of con- 

 sulting this office for the best remedies for mosquito bites. Those 

 who were in Alaska the preceding year always state that they never 

 experienced or even imagined anything in the mosquito line quite equal 

 to those found in our northern territory. Mr. W. C. Henderson, of 

 Philadelphia, who spent some time in Alaska recently, writes : "They 

 existed in countless millions, driving us to the xerge of suicide or 

 insanity." Nothing has as yet been published regarding the exact 

 species found in Alaska, but Mr. Coquillett has determined Onlex con- 

 sobrinus and Ciilex impigeT from specimens collected by Prof. Trevor 

 Kincaid on the Harriman expedition of 1899. C. coiisobrlwus was 

 collected at Sitka June 16, and Yakutat June 21; and C. implger was 

 taken at Sitka June 16, Yakutat June 21, Virgins Bay June 26, and 

 Popoff Island July 8-16. 



That the knowledge of the existence of mosquitoes in boreal regions 

 is not new is shown by the quotation just made from Kirby and Spence, 

 and in Bulletin No. 1 the writer mentioned some of the instances of 

 record by arctic explorers, citing, for example, the narrative of C. F. 

 Hall's second arctic expedition, in which the statement is made that 



