GNATS. 269 



during which time the weather was often extremely 

 mild, and December and January, considered as 

 winter months, quite unseasonably so. One is 

 almost irresistibly led to ask in what state must be 

 the volition and feelings of an animal, which, under 

 such circumstances, for more than half a year, is not 

 roused from its slumbers by any of the usual calls 

 to locomotion and activity.* 



GNATS (CULICES). 



THE gnats which bite, and which are so trouble- 

 some in houses, consisting of the Culex pipiens and 

 two or three allied species, appear to me to be 

 almost all females: it is rare to be bitten by the 

 males at all.f These last keep more out of doors ; 

 and I observe, that the broods which may be seen 



* The inactive habits of this insect, and its seldom taking 

 wing, may be the cause of its being found in such perfect condi- 

 tion so many months after its first appearance in the moth state. 

 Thus, a writer in The Zoologist (p. 260) mentions taking one 

 in an empty house on the 13th of March ; and observes that "it 

 was thoroughly perfect, the scales not being abraded on any part 

 of it." He seems in doubt whether it had hibernated or not : 

 this however had most probably been the case. See also p. 333 

 of the same work, for a further notice respecting the hibernation 

 of this insect. 



t This fact is noticed by Humboldt with respect to the Culices 

 of South America. He says, " the males are extremely rare, and 

 you are seldom stung except by females." Pers. Narr. vol. v. 

 p. 98. 



Humboldt mentions also another fact, with respect to one spe- 

 cies, called in South America the Zancudo, which, if generally 

 true of this tribe of insects, is curious, and interesting to know ; 



