Mosquitoes and Parasite Problems. 139 



gratify its appetite for blood ; but of the gnats in 

 many districts in South America it would be nearer 

 the mark to say that only one in a hundred millions 

 can ever do so. 



Curtis discovered that only the female mosquito 

 bites or sucks blood, the male being without tongue 

 or mandibles ; and he asks, What, then, does the 

 male feed on? He conjectures that it feeds on 

 flowers ; but, had he visited some swampy places 

 in hot countries, where flowers are few and the 

 insects more numerous than the sands on the sea- 

 shore, he would most probably have said that the 

 males subsist on decaying vegetable matter and 

 moisture of slime. It is, however, more important 

 to know what the female subsists on. "We know 

 that she thirsts for warm mammalian blood, that 

 she seeks it with avidity, and is provided with an 

 admirable organ for its extraction only, unfortu- 

 nately for her, she does not get it, or, at all events, 

 the few happy individuals that do get it are swamped 

 in the infinite multitude of those that are doomed 

 by nature to total abstinence. 



I should like to know whether this belief of 

 Curtis, shared by Westwood and other distinguished 

 entomologists, but originally put forward merely as 

 a conjecture, has ever been tested by careful ob- 

 servation and experiment. If not, then it is strange 

 that it should have crept into many important works, 

 where it is stated not as a mere guess, but as an 

 established fact. Thus, Yan Beneden, in his work 

 on parasites, while classing female mosquitoes with 

 his "miserable wretches," yet says, " If blood fails 

 them, they live, like the males, on the juices of 



