MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 6$3 
I will now sum up the conclusions at which I have arrived from these 
notes,and mention a few facts which I have either discovered for myself, 
or confirmed in the course of my observations. 
In the first place, you will note that I have found larve in every month 
of the year, except February, whenI did not look for them. But I had 
plenty in captivity during that month, which I had brought home in Janu- 
ary. So it appears that, in a place with a moist climate, in which there is 
always some water to be found, mosquitoes can survive without hibernation 
and may be found at all seasons. But as with other insects generally in 
this Presidency, the time when they are most abundant is the close of 
the rains. As we all know, this is also the time when malarious fever is most 
prevalent, It does not follow that mosquitoes cannot tide over a time when 
there is no water,if they are reduced to that necessity. When i was out with 
Dr. Venis, we came upon a puddle in which he had found larve before, and 
found it without water, though not very dry. He scraped up some of the 
moist earth with a pen-knife and took it home and put it into filtered water, 
and in a few days minute larve appeared, showing that there had been 
eggs in the earth, which had retained their vitality. The eggs I have 
found have hatched in from one to seven days, but, of course, I did not 
know when they had been laid, and I have never been able to induce my 
tame mosquitos to lay in captivity, so I cannot say whatis the normal 
time spent in the egg state, I may mention that the eggs are very like 
minute carroway seeds and easily recognised even with the naked eye 
when once you know them, They are laid singly on the surface of the 
water and not attached to anything, 
I was anxious to ascertain next the length of the larva life, but found 
that it varied indefinitely with the conditions, Given warmth and plenty 
of food, a larva will come to maturity in eight days, or perhaps less, but I 
have had one for more than a fortnight, and then it died before becoming 
a@ pupa, The time spent in the pupa state in all my specimens was more 
than 24,butless than 48, hours. So I think we may put down the time 
which it takes to produce a mesquito at something between ten days and 
a fortnight from the laying of the egg, and water treated with kerosine oil 
once a fortnight should be perfectly safe. Itis very difficult to ascertain 
the normal life of the adult mosquito, because we cannot keep them in 
natural conditions. Some of mine lived for ten days, but, as I have said, 
they would not lay their eggs, and that alone could not but affect the 
length of life, 
Another matter of great practical importance is to ascertain the exact 
conditions in which the larva thrives, so that we may reverse those condi- 
tions, and also that we may know where Anopheles is likely to be found 
‘and where we need not look for it, ButI have found it much easier to 
recognise the sort of water that suits them than to describe it, or explain 
