GNATS, MIDGES, AND MOSQUITOES 237 



room in which mosquitoes were flying. The door of the 

 " mosquito house " having been left open for some hours 

 after the man had gone to sleep, was then closed, and 

 the mosquitoes which had entered were thus entrapped. 

 These were found in the morning clinging to the netting, 

 gorged with blood, and were carefully collected day by 

 day, and preserved ; some were examined under the 

 microscope at once, others not until after an interval, so 

 as to secure a later stage of the parasite ; in this way, 

 by the examination of large numbers of the insects, 

 after intervals of different length, the fate of the 

 swallowed Filarice was at length made out up to the 

 point indicated above. 



One of the most curious of the annoyances that have 

 been recorded as occasioned by gnats was illustrated in 

 some specimens exhibited at a meeting of the Bristol 

 Naturalists' Society in 1878. Mr. J. W. Clarke showed 

 some sheets of writing paper from Sweden, which formed 

 part of a large consignment that had been greatly in- 

 jured during the process of manufacture through a 

 swarm of gnats having got mixed up with the pulp. 

 The remains of the flies were to be seen in the material 

 of the paper, and some specimens were so perfect as to 

 be easily identified as a Culex, and all seemed to belong 

 to the same species. Another record is made of a 

 centipede similarly preserved in paper, and no doubt 

 paper manufacturers could supply many others, though 

 perhaps few on so extensive a scale as that alluded to 

 above. 



It is difficult for a stay-at-home Englishman, used 

 only to the minor inconveniences caused by insects 

 in this highly denaturalised country, to conceive the 

 horror with which gnats and mosquitoes are viewed in 

 those more primitive regions in which they still exist in 



