122 



OBSEItVATIONS ON THK Ml-K HISTORY, ETC. 



cii'cIc'R, that the male mosquito does not stoop to do such blood- 

 thirsty work. He is too much of a gentleman, using that word 

 in its original sense, to do such crimson deeds. Therefore all 

 that deadly work is done by the females. With velvet wings, 

 neatlj-boddiced figure, a soothing song in her mouth, but an 

 armoury of swords in her nose, she penetrates everywhere in 

 search of blood. Of course, men have not always been correct 

 in their opinions, and in the future, when we may have female 

 biologists and microscopists as eminent as Lubbock and 

 Dallinger are now, their more piercing vision may find some 

 flaw ill this opinion and r^U away from the female mosquito the 

 stigma now attached to her name. However, that is the verdict 

 at present, and I must say it is confirmed by my own experience. 

 Every time I have killed the insect that has bitten me, on 

 examination the culprit has always been a female. 



But you may ask how I can tell the sex. Well, by simply 

 examining their heads, nature has made a difference between 

 male and female heads. In the human race the new woman 

 has of late years been trying to abolish the distinction. They 

 have succeeded to a large extent, in fashion and costume. To 

 see only the busts of a lot of fashionably-dressed men and women 

 it is not always an easy matter to tell their sex. This was not 

 the case in my boyish days, but now the ladies have adopted so 

 many articles of attire formerly used only by gentlemen, that it 

 puzzles one sometimes to know which is w^hich. The hair is 

 often cut and parted in the same way. Hats, caps, fronts, 

 collars, and jackets are often precisely the same. The sexes of 

 the mosquito have not so distinguished themselves. They wear 

 the same kind of garments, and trim their heads in the same way 

 as did their grandfathers and grandmothers. I have here in fig. 7 

 a representation of a female head. It is incomplete, for to take in 

 the full length of the organs I had to leave out part of the head. 

 You only see the upper rounded part, from which the various 

 organs spring. The straight, thick, central projection is the 

 proboscis. This is a flexible tube enclosing the sharp lancets. 

 At the base lie two little organs, one on each side, these are the 

 juillii. Usually very short in the female, but long in the male. 

 Two slender organs, called the antenn*, stretch out to each side. 

 These possess 14 joints, and from each of these joints a little 

 circlet of hair springs. These whorls of hair are almost of equal 

 length in any joint from base to tip. Remembering these points 



