INTRODUCTION. 



A number of articles and notes concerning mosquitoes have been 

 published in different bulletins of this Division. The most extensive 

 was the leading article in Bulletin No. 4, New Series ("The Principal 

 Household Insects of the United States"), and constituted the larger 

 part of chapter 1, on "Mosquitoes and Fleas." In this treatment of 

 mosquitoes the complete life history of Ciilex pmigens was given, based 

 upon original observations made in the summer of 1895, and some gen- 

 eral remarks on the subject of other species were brought together. 

 Four pages were devoted to the subject of remedies, and the mosquitoes 

 of the country at large were tabulated, with such notes on geographical 

 distribution as could be brought together. The earlier notes pub- 

 lished by the Division, including those extracts from correspondence 

 and general notes which had ])een published in the seven volumes of 

 Insect Life, and the writer's two articles on the use of kerosene against 

 mosquito larvse, were all digested in this bulletin, which was published 

 in the summer of 1896. Subsequent brief notes on remedies have l)eeu 

 published by the writer in miscellaneous bulletins of the Division and 

 in the Scientific American, and the life history of Anoplieles quadriTna- 

 ciilatiis was described, in comparison with that of Ovlex pungeris. in a 

 short illustrated article in the Scientific American for Jul}^ T, 1900. 



The writer first became interested in mosquitoes thirty years or 

 more ago, when as a boy he fished and collected insects in the marshe^s 

 at the head of Cayuga Lake, New York, and as early as 1867 had 

 experimented with the kerosene remedy against mosquito larvaB in a 

 horse trough at Ithaca. In 1881 he discussed with Dr. A. F. A. King and 

 the late C. V. Riley the bearings of the theory, which Dr. King was 

 the first to bring forward in the United States, of the probable rela- 

 tion between mosquitoes and malaria, both Dr. Riley and the writer 

 contending, it must lie confessed, that the arguments brought forward 

 b}^ Dr. King in conversation were based upon coincidental observations, 

 and afforded no good proof of cause and effect. 



The writer\s practical demonstration in 1894 of the value of the 

 kerosene treatment as a practical large-scale remedy attracted consid- 

 erable attention to the subject of remedif^s for mosquitoes, and many 

 large-scale experiments were made, some of them being successful to 

 a marked degree, as will b«> pointed out later in the section on rem- 

 edies. The services of the members of this office force were called 



