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PLEA FOR INVESTIGATION OF INDIAN CULICIDLA. 55 
name all collections sent tome. Wherever possible, it will be well to 
send a series of specimens, so that it may provide for sending duplicate 
specimens to Mr, Theobald, who is also working at the group for the 
British Museum, and to admit of specimens being returned for the 
reference of the collector, as well as providing specimens for the 
Society’s collection. 
2. The identification of larvae and pupz with their corresponding 
adult insects, which is best ascertained by “ breeding out.” In conducting 
such experiments it is important to copy, as nearly as possible, natural 
conditions. It is, for example, very difficult to keep Anopheles larvee 
alive for any length of time, except in a large apparatus in which 
natural conditions are followed. A large naund, half filled with mud 
from an Anopheles pool, and filled with its water covered witha 
correspondingly large net, is required. 
3. The manner in which each species tides over the season un- 
favourable to its multiplication. Anopheles, e.g., at any rate, in Northern 
India, is rare in the hot weather, but I am inclined tc believe that a 
careful search will discover all stages of the insect all the year round. 
And, in any case, the adults, though scarce in the hot weather, are 
never entirely absent, but it may be that larvz also survive in 
suitable localities. At present, in the Norta-West Provinces, for 
example, larvee are to be found in great numbers, but pups are very 
rare, It may be, therefore, that the duration of larval life is protracted, — 
and that the change with the pupal stage is indefinitely postponed 
by a cold which is yet insufficient to kill the larve outright. 
It has been suggested that the adults deposit their egos on dry 
ground, in places likely to be covered with water in the rains. Zoologi- 
eally speaking, this is in the last degree improbable, but the question 
should be tested. To do so, a known Anopheles pool should be covered 
in, after it has dried up, with wire gauze. 
Ifthe idea be founded on fact, larvee should be found during the 
following rainy season in the pool thus protected from the visit of 
adult females. 
It has also been suggested that the larvee can resist dissecation. I 
have experimented on this point and find that the larvee die and decom- 
pose long before the mud in which they have been stranded is anything | 
like dry, but confirmatory observations are desirable. 
H) 
