124 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE HISTORY, ETC. 



song is not intended to annoy you when she lifts her voice around 

 your head and bed. It is the mosquitoes love song. It may be 

 a serenade to her lover, or a prolonged cooey to her husband, to 

 come, after her drinking bout, and help her to fly steadily home, 

 or it may be an invitation to her daughter's and neighbour's 

 wives to join her in the picnic, and they are not long in coming 

 to her side. 



The eye is a wonderful organ, occupying the largest part of 

 the head. I have never been able to secure a good photograph, 

 but here in fig. 10 is a Vvtle bit as a sample of the whole. That 

 is about the r)Oth part of his lordship's eye. Each of these round 

 dots is a perfect eye in itself, and is furnished with a crystalline 

 lens and a slender branch of the optic nerve. They are planted as 

 close together as they can be, and are set all over his cheeks, 

 forehead, and right round the back of his head. I have at- 

 tempted to count them, and the nearest estimate is that the 

 mosquito has a thousand eyes. The eye forms a very beautiful 

 object under the microscope, especially when seen by reflected 

 light on a dark ground. 



The (iittriuitt and jut/f-ii appear not only to be organs of touch, 

 but of hearing too. 



Now about the piercing apparatus. On the upper side of 

 the proboscis lies a deep groove, or channel, and in the female 

 there are packed into it, no less than six sharp-pointed lancets. 

 They are named after similar parts on other insects' heads. A 

 pair are called mandibles or upper jaws. Another pair maxillce 

 or lower jaws. One is called the labrum or upper lip. The 

 thickest lancet is the lingua, and represents the tongue, while 

 the thick sheath covering the whole, is the labium, or lower lip. 

 On account of their extreme fineness and transparency, and 

 their resistance to most' stains, I have not yet been able to get a 

 slide that will show them satisfactory, although — like the King 

 of Dahomey — I have sacrificed hundreds of heads in the 

 attempt. If a hundred of these lancets were tied into a bundle, 

 it would not then be so thick as the smallest sewing-needle used 

 by a lady. The other lancets are very much finer : in fact, it 

 takes some practice with the microscope to be able to discern the 

 whole six, and it is most readily etiected by dark-ground illumi- 

 nation. In many illustrations, the mistake is made of 



