Mating 63 



selves. The swarms grew more restless as darkness 

 gathered, two or three males pouncing simultane- 

 ously on one female, all falling together to the 

 ground and there separating. When females ceased 

 coming, the males flew upward and away. 



Swarms of mosquitoes often consist of countless 

 myriads. I have been told by a newspaper man who 

 was in Alaska that, at times, he has seen the mos- 

 quitoes rise in such droves from low areas that one 

 might easily believe the grass was afire. Something 

 like these must be the swarms at Lake Nyassa, 

 Africa, where, Livingston says, the natives gather 

 the insects into bags, dry them, and press them into a 

 sort of mosquito cake. 



Mr. Knab quotes a number of early records of 

 great assemblings of the insects about church 

 steeples, noted as far back as 1813. Three such are 

 recorded by Boll. One of these, around the steeple 

 of the Nicolai Church in Hamburg, took place on a 

 June evening at 9 o'clock. The fire department 

 was called to the spot before the truth was ascer- 

 tained, and great merriment was thereby aroused in 

 the concourse of spectators. Such false alarms ap- 

 pear not to have been uncommon. 



