EXPERIMENT STATION EEPORT. 633 



tlirouglioiit the woodland pools. There was not a great deal of 

 water anywhere at this time and no mosquitoes were on the wing. 

 Of the lai'vse sent in all save twO' or three- p'roved to be Culex cana- 

 detms. The exceptions were a specimen or two of C. mbserraius 

 and one of C. ahfitchii-mpliO'naUs. C. canadensis is always the 

 common woods mosquito of early spring, bites freely but not 

 viciously, is easily soared off, rarely ventures outside the woods, 

 never enters houses, but does occasionally get on porches where 

 they are well shaded by trees. Its life is short as a rule, and while 

 there seem to be fractional broods later in the season the mos- 

 quitoes are so rarely seen that they are scarcely to- be ranked as 

 pestiferous. Until the present year the other species were so rare 

 that we had only a few examples in the collection and both have 

 been recognized as species only within two years. 



April 22d and 23d it rained, a soaking spring rain that left 

 much water on the ground, and on the 24th Mr. Brehme made 

 another collection over the same general area, taking 334 larvse, 

 mostly of recent hatching. Most of these also proved to be C. cana- 

 densis, but there were a few ahserratus and ahfitcliii. A collection 

 made on April 28th showed the same characteristics. 



May 2d, thirteen adult mosquitoes were sent in from Millburn, 

 and of these twelve were C. cantator or salt marsh migrants and 

 one was C. abfitchii. On the same day Mr. Grossl)eck went 

 through Millburn township with specific instructions to investigate 

 the "keetle" or ''pot holes" between the wooded knolls or hillocks. 

 These pot holes are very numerous, as the country is very irregular, 

 and they vary in size from a puddle to a pool one hundred feet in 

 diameter : sometimes so shallow as to hold water for a brief period 

 ouly in early spring; in a few cases so deep as to be practically 

 permanent : sometimes without vegetation or insect life other than 

 mosquito wrigglers : sometimes with aquatic life in considerable 

 variety — mosquitoes being then, as a rule, absent. In some of 

 these pools wrigglers occurred in considerable numbers, and here 

 C. ahfitcliii was in greater abundance than we had ever known it 

 before — much more plentiful than C. canadensis, which was but 

 sparsely represented. Several swampy woodland areas were ex- 

 amined and no wrigglers of any kind were found ; predatory 

 aquatic life occurred in abundance and wrigglers simply could not 

 live here. A part of this area is overgrown with skunk cabbages, 



