Mosquitoes and Parasite Problems. 139 
gratify its appetite for blood ; but of the gnats rn 
many districts in South America it would be nearer 
the mark to say that only one in a hundred millions 
can ever do so. 
Curtis discovered that only the female mosquito 
bites or sucks blood, the male being without tongue 
or mandibles; and he asks, What, then, does the 
male feed on? He conjectures that it feeds on 
flowers ; but, had he visited some swampy places 
in hot countries, where flowers are few and the 
insects more numerous than the sands on the sea- 
shore, he would most probably have said that the 
males subsist on decaying vegetable matter and 
moisture of slime. It is, however, more important 
to know what the female subsists on. We know 
that she thirsts for warm mammalian blood, that 
she seeks it with avidity, and is provided with an 
admirable organ for its extraction—only, unfortu- 
nately for her, she does not get it, or, at all events, 
the few happy individuals that do get it are swamped 
in the infinite multitude of those that are doomed 
by nature to total abstinence. 
I should like to know whether this belief of 
Curtis, shared by Westwood and other distinguished 
entomologists, but originally put forward merely as 
a conjecture, has ever been tested by careful ob- 
servation and experiment. If not, then itis strange 
that it should have crept into many important works, 
where it is stated not as a mere guess, but as an 
established fact. Thus, Van Beneden, in his work 
on parasites, while classing female mosquitoes with 
his ‘“‘ miserable wretches,” yet says, ‘If blood fails 
them, they live, like the males, on the juices of 
