MISCELLANEOUS NOTES, 695 
Hence they dislike any motion, The more stagnant the water is and the 
more dirty, the better it pleases them, Lastly, Anopheles larve must 
have sunlight, though they will hate it more cordially than other mosquitoes 
when they come to mosquito’s estate, 
From my experience I should say that, of all larvicides, the most effectual, 
in the case of Anopheles, is little fishes, I have never found larve and 
fishes in the same pool. Once I put a large number of larve into two 
glass vessels and introduced a few gold fish into each, Next morning there 
was not one larva ineither, They have many insect enemies, too, especially 
the larve of dragonflies, but one fish will do more than a hundred of 
these, Tadpoles do not eat them. 
As regards the mature Anopheles, the most remarkable fact in my 
notes is that I have not seen one during these last twelve months, 
excepting those that I reared. This fact will give the best idea of what an 
insidious enemy we have to deal with. I lived most of the year at 
the Bombay Club, within a stone’s throw of the Frere Fountain, in 
which Anopheles was being produced by the thousand, but I never saw 
one, though I was often tormented by Culex, the larve of which were 
comparatively scarce. Anopheles is a small, slim mosquito, of a pale 
ashy-grey colour, difficult to see at any time, and it appears to fly only 
by night, so it is rarely seen, Add to this that its bite appears to be 
almost painless, and you will see that one may have malaria injected into 
him night after night while he is sleeping without curtains under the belief 
that there are no mosquitoes, I say that its bite is almost painless on 
the authority of my own experiments only. I kept mine in a bottle with 
thin muslin tied over the mouth, and if I laid my arm on the muslin the 
females attacked me at once and did not leave off till they were bloated 
with blood, I sometimes felt a slight prick at the moment when they 
punctured the skin, but there was little or.no irritation afterwards and no 
swelling, Of course, others might have been affected differently, The males 
never attempted to suck my blood, but they fed freely,as did the females 
also, on a slice of apple, fig, mango,or any juicy fruit. In default of fruit 
I gave them jam,oreven sugar and water, After a meal of blood they 
seemed to feel heavy and indisposed for active exercise, but were quite ready 
again in 24 hours, It has been stated that Anopheles is mute. This is 
certainly a mistake, Jt has a very shrill pipe. 
All the Anopheles that I have reared appear to belong to one species, 
which is probably A. rossii, but Colonel Giles’s book makes mention of several 
other more or less distinct forms in India, and until the subject has been 
more fully studied it is better not to insist on a name, 
E, H. AITKEN, 
Bombay, December, 1900, 
