I901] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 1 53 



and Cockerell, T. D. A. The American bees of the genus Andrena 

 described by F. Smith, 4. — Observer. How do bees manage to sur- 

 vive the winter? British Bee Journal, London, March 7, '01. — Plateau, 

 F. Observations on the phenomena of constancy in some Hymenoptera, 

 35, xlv, 2, March 23. — Prowazek, S. Observations on ants [senses 

 of], Der Zoologische Garten, Frankfurt a. M., Feb., '01. — Rudow. 

 Some observations on insect buildings, 84, Mar. 7. — Weissiiiaun, A. 

 Remarks on Herr Dickel's article [see aiite'\, 149 



DEPARTMENT OF ES0N0M16 ENTOMOLOSY 



Edited by Prof. JOHN B. SMITH, Sc. D., New Brunswick, N. J. 



Papers for this department are solicited. They should be sent to the editor 

 Prof. John B. Smith, Sc.D., New Brunswick, N. J. 



SOME NOTES ON THE LARVAL HABITS OF 

 CULEX PUNGENS. 



BV J. B. SMITH, SC.D. 



New Jersey's reputation for mosquitoes is well established, and more 

 people come into our State annually to be bitten by our shore species 

 than go to any other State in the Union for any like purpose. In some of 

 the swampy districts in the pines they make life a burden at times, so 

 when my good friend J. Turner Brakeley wrote me in the late summer 

 that, in looking at the contents of some pitcher plant leaves he had found 

 mosquito larvae in abundance in the water they contained, it made no 

 especial impre.ssion upon me. It was in a way what I would have ex- 

 pected, though no one had noted this, so far as I could then remember. 

 Dr. Riley at one time bred a number of species from this plant ; but seems 

 either to have found no mosquitoes or to have ignored them. Mrs. Treat 

 made many interesting observations on the feeding habits of the plant 

 itself, feeding the leaves with raw meet in place of the insects that ordin- 

 arily fall into them ; but she also ignored the mosquitoes. 



Late in November I spent three days with Mr. Brakeley at Lahaway, 

 and one of our walks was into a huckleberry and wild cranberry swamp 

 where pitcher plants were abundant. Though the weather was yet quite 

 mild, mosquitoes were no longer obtrusive. There were occasional 

 specimens to be sure, but they seemed to be left-overs not yet in hiberna- 

 ting quarters. The interesting point was that in every leaf examined 

 there were wrigglers varying in size from an eighth to a quarter of an inch 

 in length. There was always a mass of insect fragments at the bottom, 

 say from one-half to an inch in depth, and in composition this varied from 

 a dense black ooze at the lowest point to entire or only partly decayed 

 specimens at the top of the mass. The question arose at once whether 

 these larvae would yet develope that season, and from published accounts 



