5t79 



REVIEW. 



^NATS OR MOSQUITOES. 



BY 

 LlEDT.-COLONEL G. M. GiLES, I.M.S., F.R.C.S. 



Of Colonel Giles' book the worst that can be said is that it is premature, 

 •and to this there is a reply that a Manual is for beginners, and in the subject 

 of Mosquitoss we are all beginners and must have a manual. The subject 

 itself is only three or four years old, for until the great discovery which 

 ■connected mosquitoes with malaria, those insects received veiy little attention 

 from us in return for all they bestowed. When Ross found that the malarial 

 parasite was carried by a particular kind of mosquito with spotted wings, he 

 could get no name for it. Entomologists declared it to belong to the genus 

 Anopheles and called it A, rossii, and it proves to be the commonest and most 

 widely-spread species of the genus in India. Since that time there has been 

 a boom in Culicidce, and the most obscure gnats are being collected and de- 

 scribed and named and classified all over the world and a mosquito literature 

 is sprouting everywhere in periodicals and fugitive papers like grass after 

 rain. That it is a great convenience to collectors to have this bi'ought toge- 

 ther into one book is obvious enough, but it is equally obvious that any 

 book published at such a time must be out of date in six months. It is like 

 cutting grass which is growing all the while. Nor will the book be out of 

 date only in a very short time : it will ba found to be full of errors also, 

 because the knowledge we have now is so fragmentary that the conclusions 

 drawn from it are certain to be falsified in many points when we know more. 

 In all probability this will be true in a special degree of the classification. 

 Colonel Giles has followed the classification adopted or devised by Mr. 

 Theobald of the British Museum, of which he says, " It was only after the 

 examinaiion of an enormous mass of material that Mr. Theobald found, in 

 the character and arrangement of the scales that clothe the body and wings, 

 a working basis on which to found new generic distinctions." But does Mr. 

 Theobald yet know enough about mosquitoes in the various stages of their 

 life to have any assurance that the forms and arrangement of their scales are 

 trustworthy indications of their real affinities ? He cannot. Nobody does 

 as yet. His classiScation, in short, is of the same value as the Linnsean 

 classification of plants by the number of their stamens and pistils. That 

 system, indeed, served the world for a long time and was very useful, but in the 

 present day it will not pass. We require a classification which is not merely 

 a useful key to enable us to find what we want, but a lesson in the ture 

 relationships of species. In the case of mosquitoes such a classification is 

 not possible yet, and*it is better to avow our ignorance and wait than to givt) 

 our successors the trouble of pulling down our work. A very rough provi- 

 sional arrangement f jr practical purposes is all that can safely be attempted 



