310 



The Two-winged Flies 



leave no standing puddles in the back yard or decorative lily-pools in the 

 front; pour kerosene on the surface of ponds and ditches in the neighbor- 

 hood, and the mosquito problem for localities not adjacent to swamps and 

 marshes is nearly solved. Where the problem includes swamps larger 

 measures must be undertaken, community effort may be necessary, and the 

 municipal or county administration called on to take official action. But 

 when it is remembered that abolishing the mosquito pest means doing away 

 with malaria, and in the subtropic and tropic region with yellow fever and 

 filariasis, no pains will seem too troublesome, no expense too large in this 

 warfare of man against mosquitoes. 



FIG. 418. FIG. 419. 



FIG. 418. Scales on the wings of Culex fatigans. (After Theobald; greatly magnified.) 

 FIG. 419. A midge, male, Chironomus sp. (From life; much enlarged.) 



Looking not unlike mosquitoes are the larger species of the family Chiro- 

 nomidae, whose members are popularly known as midges and punkies, the 

 name blood-worm being applied to the reddish aquatic larvae of certain 

 species. Like the mosquitoes, the males are distinguished from the females by 

 their very bushy or feathery antenna?, but, unlike the mosquitoes, the females, 

 except in the case of the minute punkies or "no-see-ums" of the New Eng- 

 land and Canadian mountains and forests, and their near relatives in the 

 western forests, are not blood-suckers. The midges are particularly notice- 

 able in "dancing-time," that is, when they collect in great swarms and toss up 

 and down in the air over meadows, pastures, and stream sides. 



The larvae (Fig. 420) of most species are aquatic, some of them forming 

 small tubular cases, as caddis-fly larvae do, and most ot them being distinctly 

 reddish in color. They wriggle about in the slime and decaying leaves at 

 the bottom of ponds or lakes, feeding on vegetable matter. The pupae 

 (Fig. 421) are, like those of the mosquitoes, active, although of course non- 

 feeding, and are provided with two bunches of fine hair-like tracheal gills 

 on the dorsum of the thorax, or with a pair of short club-shaped processes 



