INVERTEBRATA. 417 



Again, this mouth-sting and its possessor are described : 

 " They (the mosquitos) are provided with a long, horny, 

 stiff, and perpendicular proboscis, with antennae consisting 

 of fourteen joints, feathered on the males, and with two 

 wings covered with small scales. Every part of this insect, 

 when magnified, presents not only a beautiful and wonderful 

 appearance, but cannot fail of exciting contemplation of the 

 most serious (certainly) kind. Indeed, one has no idea of 

 the amazing beauty of these diminutive creatures until he 

 has observed them through a microscope."* The micro- 

 scope is not required to discover the " amazing beauty" of 

 this lovely little creature ; when he soars off, upon his " im- 

 maculate wings," filled with your blood, it is visible to the 

 naked eye. The biographers of the Culex, and travelers, 

 generally tell wonderful and hideous stories of him, from 

 the tropics where he flourishes vastly, to the region " where 

 the polar winter extends its icy reign." 



In the Crimea, Russian soldiers are required to sleep in 

 sacks ; the " case-hardened cuticle of the Laplander" is re- 

 quired to be daubed with unguents of tar, fish-grease, or 

 cream, " or wear nets steeped in fetid birch-oil to protect 

 him from bites of these blood-suckers." Travelers in warm 

 countries represent them as "demons," that the sound they 

 make is "fearful," that "men die of mortification of the 

 skin" from their bites, or if they recover, look as if they had 

 had the small-pox. Among Cossack herdsmen they are 

 veritable plagues, "thousands of these insatiate monsters 

 entering the nostrils, ears, eyes, and mouth of the cattle, who 

 shortly after die of convulsions, or of secondary inflamma- 

 tion, or from absolute suffocation." In certain countries 

 men are required to travel with their heads in bags and 

 hands in leather gloves. Weld relates the fact from 

 Washington himself, " that at one place the mosquitos were 

 so powerful as to pierce through his boots ;" and Humboldt 

 informs us "that between the little harbor of Higeurote and 



* Jaeger. 



