REPORT ON MOSQUITOES. 271 



depressed spots. I have no direct observations on this point, but 

 the places where the eggs and larvae have been found leave no 

 other explanation. It is, at all events, certain that the eggs are 

 in the mud at the bottom of pools early in spring. 



Breeding places are any sort of woodland pools or even larger 

 water bodies. Mr. Brakeley finds them in the water covering 

 his cranberry bogs during the winter, sometimes in very large 

 numbers. These bogs are covered with water late in fall and 

 are kept covered until the middle of May thereafter, just long 

 enough to mature canadensis. From that time until late October 

 the bogs are dry, and when they are flooded canadensis adults 

 have disappeared. The eggs must, therefore, have been laid on 

 the bogs when they were dry, to account for the swarms of larvae 

 found in early May. It should be noted that these bogs are 

 closely surrounded by woodland. 



I have never found the larva in open swamps or in pools far 

 from the edge of a wood, but it was present once in a pool with 

 cantator at the edge of the Shrewsbury meadow. 



Our records show collections made in most of the counties 

 of the State, and there is probably not a bit of moist woodland 

 anywhere in it in which C. canadensis may not be found in early 

 spring. 



The wrigglers that have been found associated with canaden- 

 sis are C. cantans, which is usually rare, but common in some 

 seasons ; C. aurifer, which is local and rare ; C. melanurns, which 

 is yet more rare; C. territans, which often replaces it late in the 

 season; C. reptans, C. serratus, C. trivittatus, C. dupreei and C. 

 squamiger , all of which are rare. 



Though the larvae may be found in all sorts of pools, they 

 are commonly of clean water. Woodland springs nearly always 

 have some of them, and the pools in which they are most plenti- 

 ful are those formed by melted snows and early spring rains over 

 a bed of dead leaves in a depression or clicked stream bed near 

 the edge of the woodland, or in a small clearing. I have never 

 found them in really fcxul water. 



As nearly as can be made out from field observations, all cana- 

 densis eggs that hibernate hatch between February ist and May 

 loth, at tlie latter of which periods adults of the earlier hatching 

 are already out in full force and ready to oviposit. Of the eggs 

 laid during May a fair percentage hatch early in June and give 

 a fair second brood of adults. When these adults oviposit, an 

 equal percentage of their eggs also develops, and this continues 

 through the season, the bulk of each batch of eggs lying over 

 to the next year. This keeps up an ever decreasing supply as 



