4 PSYCHE [February 



in a large dish of water and next morning, to my great surprise, I found a fair lot 

 of larvae. Out of these I obtained 8 adults and of these three were undoubted C. 

 sollicitans : It is a fair suggestion that there is something yet to be learned con- 

 cerning the relationship between C. sollicitans and C. taeniorhynchiis. 



The season at the point where the collections were made was phenomenally 

 dry and all pools and ditches remained dry until September 5 or 6, when a heavy 

 storm filled everything. On the i ith, Mr, Dickerson investigated, found every 

 pool swarming with recent larvae, and brought up 20 small sods from ten separate 

 places well above the pool line and which had been entirely dry since early July 

 and_ probably a month before that date. All but two of these sods had been tested 

 and had shown the presence of eggs, hence it was a fair conclusion that eggs were 

 generally distributed all over the meadow. From eight of these sods larvae were 

 i)red in the laboratory. 



The eggs are spindle shaped just a little curved, shining, and when the larva 

 hatches the upper \ lifts off as if by a hinge. 



Another observation made at Beach Haven early in August throws further 

 light upon the egg-laying habits of the species. A very heavy rain after a long 

 dry spell, followed by a series of showers during which 3 or 4 inches of rain fell, 

 filled every lo.w area in the meadows v.'ith from \ to \\ inches of water. Within 

 twenty-four hours this entire area was swarming with larvae just hatched and in 

 forty-eight hours millions had perished because the water had disappeared: evap- 

 orated by the hot sun or soaked into the parched soil. It would be easy to add 

 to this further observations, all tending to the point that the female oviposits 

 almost anywhere in the meadows, at the base of grasses ; but it would seem as if 

 the above were sufficient. 



I stated that, in early July, there was no trouble in finding gravid females 

 and, indeed, almost all the females taken were full of eggs. It is a curious fact 

 that this condition was not again duplicated later in the season. 



From the beginning of September to the middle of October collections were 

 made daily on the Newark meadows, and from that time to the end of mosquito 

 Hight in November, collections were made at least once and usually twice a week. 

 Yet of the many hundreds of examples dissected not one contained mature eggs. 

 After a long period of drought which left the upper part of the Newark meadows 

 dry, C. sollicitans became very scarce in early September. On the night of the 

 4th and 5lh there was a very heavy tide that flooded the meadows to the edge of 

 the City, and covered the marsh tract at the mouth of the Elizabeth River. On 

 the 6th Mr. H. H. Brehme, who made the meadows investigations for me, found 

 everything swarming with recently developed larvae which grew rapidly as the 

 pools gradually dried up. By the i6th almost the entire brood was mature and 



