Tue NortHern Microscorist. 
No. 9. SEPTEMBER. 1881. 
THE MOSQUITO AND GNAT.* 
HE subject has been so well illustrated in the case of the 
English Gnat that I can hope to offer few observations with 
which the members of the Society are not already familiar. The 
resemblance, indeed, between the tropical Mosquito—the Culex 
mosquito—and the more familiar Gnat—the Culex pipiens—is so 
great, that one can well be studied in the other; and at the outset 
I must confess that so far as my own observations go there seems 
to be practically no difference between them, certainly not enough 
to render one readily distinguishable from the other. 
The two following illustrations will serve to show the leading 
features of the East-Indian Mosquito, fig. 38 being the female and 
fig. 39 the male insect, 
Fig. 38. 
The Mosquito, like the Gnat, belongs to that family of Dipterous 
Insects called Culicidze, of which the characteristics are, the pos- 
session of complex suctorial mouth organs, many jointed antennz 
and palpi, a small head, and slender body with comparatively long 
* A Paper read before the Manchester Microscopical Society, July 7th, 1881. 
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