1903] SMITH:— CULEX 3 



pools were everywhere much reduced, swarming wilh hrrvac and pupae, while the 

 grass was filled wilh males. There were very few females and evidently, of the 

 new brood just coming to maturity, only the males had yet emerged. A month 

 later only a few bodies of water remained and they were drying up fast — so fast 

 indeed, that thousands of larvae failed to come to maturity, and the half or quarter 

 inch of water remaining in some pools was one squirming, wriggling mass. 



A systematic search was now made for the eggs and they were found in quan- 

 tity after the right places were determined. (3f the older females, flying July 8-20, 

 almost all contained eggs, ranging from soft, white, through pearly, translucent, as 

 the shell formed, to black. Black eggs only were found in the meadows, well above 

 the recent water line of such pools as yet remained, in the black mud in which 

 their color made them almost invisible. It has been recently suggested that black 

 is an unusual or exceptional color for mosquito eggs and that the habit of ovipos- 

 iting on land rather than water is exceptional. This may be true for Louisiana 

 where the observations leading to that suggestion were made; but in New Jersey 

 C. sollicitans certainly lays black eggs in black mud. No other color would do so 

 well under the circumstances and, outside the body of the mosquito, I never saw^ 

 C. sollicitans eggs other than black ! From a piece of sod about 4 inches square 

 I washed the surface mud into a basin of water, waited until the whole settled to 

 the bottom, to make certain that the eggs did not float, and next morning I had 

 over 300 and possibly 500 lively young wrigglers. 



It is important to note, in this connection, that though Mr. E. L. Dickerson (my 

 assistant) and I collected several hundreds of specimens of mosquitoes between July 

 8th and 20th no examples of C. taeniorhync/ius were seen, nor had I at anytime 

 previously in 1902 collected C. taeniorhync/ius near this point. Neither was that 

 species bred out of any larvae taken from the pools where we were then experi- 

 menting. 



Two large sods were cut out of the marsh, well above any recent pools, and 

 these were carried to New Brunswick to serve for laboratory tests. One sod was 

 kept entirely dry, the other was kept constantly moist though never covered with 

 water. The presence of eggs in both sods was demonstrated by actual examination 

 and, at intervals, small pieces of sod were covered with water and the results were 

 noted. From the dry sod larvae were always obtained in a short time — from one 

 half to one hour ; from the wet sod no larvae were obtained and all the eggs 

 found were burst. 



Two lots of larvae from the dry sod were bred to maturity and all the adults 

 proved C. taeniorhynchiis I The larvae were those of C. sollicitans except that they 

 seemed undersized ; but the adults were unquestionably the other species. Finally, 

 September 21, two months after I took it up, I placed the remnants of the moist sod 



