240 Lt.-Col. A. Alcock on the 



Literature dealimj loith Oriental Species of Stoinoxy?. 



LiXNE. 1761. Fauna Suec. ed. ii. p, 467. 

 Macquart. 1850. Dipt. Exot. Suppl. 4, p. 239. 

 KoNDANi. 1873. Ann. Mus. Genova, vol. iv. p. 388. 

 Bigot. 1887. Bull. Zool. Soc. Fr. torn. xii. p. 593. 

 Gruxbeeg. 1906. Zool. Anz. Bd. xxx. p. 88. 



. 1907. Die blutsaugenden Dipteren, p. lo7. 



PiCARD. 1908. Bull. Soc. Ent. Fr. p. 20. 



Austen. 1909. Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. (8) iii. p. 292. 



Beuxetti. 1910. Kecords of Ind. Mus. vol. iv. no. iv. p. 66. 



Isly best thanks are due to Lt.-Col. Alcock, I. M.S., F.R.S., 

 CLE., &c., and Mr. Austen, of the British Museum, for 

 their great help in preparing this paper. 



XXVL — Remarks on the Classification of the Culicid?e, with 

 particular reference to the Constitution of the Genus 

 Anopheles. By A. Alcock, CLE., M.B., LL.D., F.R.S., 



Lt.-Colonel I.M.S. (retired). 



Before the great discovery of Ross attracted attention to 

 mosquitoes no one questioned the propriety of grouping the 

 Ckilicidge in two subfamilies — namely, (1) Corethriua, in 

 which the proboscis is short and soft and the veins of the 

 wings are clothed with ordinary hairs; and (2) Culicinse, in 

 which the proboscis is long and stiff (and the mouth-parts in 

 the female are formed for piercing) and the veins of the 

 wings are clothed with scales. 



Some recent writers, however, ignoring all the common 

 features that distinguish these two groups from other Nemato- 

 cerous Diptera, and exaggerating the importance of the 

 functionally different mouth-parts of the female Culicinre, 

 have cut the Corethrinre adrift, and have given the exclusive 

 possession of the common family title to the Culicince. Such 

 a proceeding seems to me to defeat the humane objects of a 

 zoological classification, which are to draw tight and to knit 

 together the morphological bonds that should unite diversely 

 modified relatives. Even when the most is made of the 

 difference between the larva of Cule.v and the larva of 

 Corethra, there still remains the fact that the larva of 

 Mochlonyx (whose adult is indisputably Corcthrine) possesses 

 the structural ]icculiarities of the larva both of Corethra and 

 of Culex, besides exhibiting, in its four clypeal bristles, one of 

 the peculiarities of the larva of Anopheles. 



