240 Lt.-Col. A. Alcock c 



Literature dealing with Oriental ecies of StomoxyB. 



LiNNE. 1761. Fauna Suec. ed. ii. p. 467. 

 Macquart. 1850. Dipt. Exot. Suppl. 4, p. i ']f'<. 

 IlONDANi. 1873. Ann. Mus. Genova, vol. iv. p. : sy, 

 liiGOT. 1887. Bull. Zool. Soc. Fr. torn. xii. p. 59^ 

 Gbunbeeg. 1906. Zool. Anz. Bd. xxx. p. 88. 



. 1907. Die blutsaugenden Dipteren, p. 157. 



TiCARD. 1908. Bull. Soc. Ent. Fr. p. 20. 



Austen. 1909. Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. (8) iii. p. 292. 



Brunetti. 1910. Records of lud. Mus. vol. iv. no. iv. p. 66. 



My best thanks are due to Lt.-Col. Alcock, I. M.S., F.R.iS., 

 CLE., &c., and Mr. Austen, of the British Museum, for 

 their great help in preparing this paper. 



XXVL — Remarks on the Classification of the Culicida>, loith 

 particular reference to the Constitution of the Genus 

 Anopheles. By A. Alcock, CLE., M.B., LL.D., F.R.S., 

 Lt.-Colonel I. M.S. (retired). 



Befoue the great discovery of Ross attracted attention to 

 mosquitoes no one questioned ihe propriety of grouping the 

 Culicidai in two subfamilies — namely, (1) Corethrinse, in 

 which the proboscis is short and soft and the veins of the 

 wings are clothed with ordinary hairs; and (2) Culicinse, in 

 which the proboscis is long and stiff (and the mouth-parts in 

 the female are formed for piercing) and the veins of the 

 wings are clothed with scales. 



Some recent writers, however, ignoring all the common 

 features that distinguish these two groups from other Nemato- 

 cerous Diptera, and exaggerating the importance of the 

 functionally different mouth-parts of the female Culicinfie, 

 have cut the Corethrinpe adrift, and have given the exclusive 

 possession of the common family title to the CulicinEe. Such 

 a ])roceeding seems to me to defeat the humane objects of a 

 zoological classification, which are to draw tight and to knit 

 together tlie morphological bonds that should unite diversely 

 modified relatives. Even when the most is made of the 

 difference between the larva of Culex and the larva of 

 Corethra, there still remains the fact that the larva of 

 Mochlonyx (whose adult is indisputably Corethrine) possesses 

 the structural peculiarities of the larva both of Coreihra and 

 of CuleXf besides exhibiting, in its four clypeal bristles, one of 

 the peculiarities of the larva o^ Anopheles. 



