198 FIELD ZOOLOGY. 



the malaria mosquito lays its eggs singly, while Culex lays 

 them in packs or rafts. In the pool which contains many 

 of the wrigglers and tumblers, there may be seen some 

 wrigglers which are coming up to breathe ; some of them 

 will be seen to hang at an angle of about forty-five 

 degrees, while others will rest nearly parallel with the 

 water surface above them. The latter are the Anopheles 

 or malaria mosquitoes, and the forty- five degree wrigglers 

 are the Culex. 



While it is true that there may be mosquitoes present 

 where there is no malaria microbe, and vice versa, the only 

 safe course to pursue is to kill off the mosquitoes already 

 hatched, and to destroy any possible breeding-places. 

 It has been proved that the malarial parasite can complete 

 its life round in some species of birds, but an Anopheles 

 mosquito, biting first such a bird, and second a human 

 being, might thus transmit the disease from the bird to 

 the human being. The malarial parasite enters the 

 digestive canal of the mosquito through its biting some 

 infected person, breeds in the intestines, passing finally 

 by the blood tract to the head and neck region, where 

 it collects in the salivary glands. When such a mosquito 

 bites another person the saliva from these glands injected 

 into the wound made by the stylets, carries with it 

 numbers of the parasites, which are at that time ready 

 to enter upon the next stage of their life history in the 

 body of the human host. 



Except in a very few cases, the male mosquito has 

 long feathery antennae, the feathery appearance being due 

 to the auditory hairs which cover the antennal joints 

 thickly. The female mosquito has antennae with fewer 

 and shorter hairs. The male mosquito, where he eats 

 at all, eats vegetable food; most of them live a much 



