REPORT ON MOSQUITOES. 71 



will fly or crawl np into the gauze hood, from which they can be 

 transferred into a bottle with a drop of chloroform or ether or 

 into a regular cyanide jar. A better way is to have a large jar 

 with a little chloroform on a wad of cotton, into which the hood 

 with all its contents can be dumped and left until the insects are 

 dead. They may then be shaken out of the hood on a piece of 

 white blotting paper and are ready to be pinned. Pinning must 

 be done with very slender steel pins, such as are used by entomolo- 

 gists ; size 00, or, for the larger species, o. The specimens 

 should first be separated with fine tweezers — never handle a mos- 

 quito if it can be avoided — into males and females, and an equal 

 number of each sex should be pinned. The pinning should be 

 done for half the specimens through the middle of the thorax 

 from the upper side, so that the insect will appear suspended in a 

 resting position, and the pin should be driven for more than half 

 its length through the body. The remainder should be pinned 

 from the side, through the middle of the thorax, and thus there 

 will be specimens that show uninjured every part of the body. 

 Such specimens as are not to be pinned may be preserved in 

 alcohol for future study ; but after a specimen has once been in 

 alcohol it will rarely make a satisfactory specimen for pinning, 

 and some species practically lose all their distinctive markings, 

 so that they cannot be surely identified afterward. Pinned speci- 

 mens may be placed in any kind of tight box ; but this should be 

 cork lined. 



All the apparatus, pins, bottles, etc., referred to here, may be 

 obtained from the American Entomological Company. 1040 

 DeKalb avenue. Brooklyn, New York, and most of it also from 

 the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, and Kny-Scheerer Com- 

 pany. New York, and Queen & Company, of Philadelphia. 



A very interesting plan when there are several ^g^ boats, is to 

 place each in a separate quart jar with some of the water from 

 the pail, and preserve one set each day, so that a series showing 

 the daily rate of growth may be easily obtained. Some of the 

 cast skins of the later stages may also be preserved, and these 

 lend themselves excellently well to mounting in Canada balsam 

 for microscopic study. These cast skins may be taken up with a 

 dropper and placed in 95 per cent, alcohol for an hour, a day or 

 a year; at any time after the hour they may be transferred to a 

 drop of liquid carbolic acid (Calvert's No. 4 or equivalent) on 

 a slide, and left until they appear transparent. This will usually 

 be a matter of minutes only, and then, when the acid is drained 

 off, the specimens may be mounted in Canada balsam in the 

 usual way without further preparation. This sort of mount 

 will show the mouth structures, the anal siphon with its pecten of 



