Mosquitoes and Parasite Problems. 141 



the same proportion to all the raptors on the globe 

 as the mosquitoes that succeed in sucking blood to 

 their unsuccessful fellows. In the case of the hawks, 

 the effect of the few meals on the entire rapacious 

 family or order would certainly be nil ; and it is 

 impossible to believe for a moment that the com- 

 paratively infinitesimal amount of blood sucked by 

 mosquitoes can serve to invigorate the species. 

 The wonder is that the machinery, which accom- 

 plishes nothing, should continue in such perfect 

 working order. 



When we consider the insect's delicate organ, so 

 admirably fitted for the purpose to which it is ap- 

 plied, it becomes difficult to believe that it could 

 have been so perfected except in a condition of 

 things utterly unlike the present. There must have 

 been a time when mosquitoes found their proper 

 nourishment, and when warm mammalian blood 

 was as necessary to their existence as honey is to 

 that of the bee, or insect food to the dragon-fly. 



This applies to many blood-sucking insects besides 

 mosquitoes, and with special force to the tick tribes 

 (Ixodes), which swarm throughout Central and South 

 America ; for in these degraded spiders the whole 

 body has been manifestly modified to fit it for a 

 parasitical life ; while the habits of the insect during 

 its blind, helpless, waiting existence on trees, and 

 its sudden great development when it succeeds in 

 attaching itself to an animal body, also point irre- 

 sistibly to the same conclusion. In the sunny up- 

 lands they act (writes Captain Burton) like the 

 mosquitoes of the hot, humid Beiramar. " The 

 nuisance is general ; it seems to be in the air ; every 



