ecelxii Proceedings of the Asiat. Soc. of Bengal. [Nov. 1918. 
Culicidae.—Probably no family in the whole of the diptera 
has been so extensively collected throughout the world and so 
assiduously worked at as this one, since the connection between 
these insects and malaria was discovered only a few years ago. 
This discovery brought a number of workers into the field with 
little or no previous systematic knowledge of diptera, with the 
inevitable result that large numbers of genera and species were 
created on minute and inconstant differences in a flood 0 
literature. The names of the principal workers need not be 
stemmed. 
In the Catalogue of Oriental Nemocera which I have now 
in hand, some 360 species of Culicidae will be recognised, not 
because they are all valid, but because the systematists have 
not yet had time to overhaul them. When this has been done, 
the species may well be reduced to two-thirds of that number 
or even to half. 
Dr. Leicester’s voluminous treatise on the Malayan species 
has been generally overlooked but much care and time have 
evidently been spent on it.? 
As was foreseen by me in the early days of the rush on 
species making, most authors are content nowadays t0 refer 
the bulk of the Anophelines to the genus Anopheles, and a large 
proportion of the Culicines to Culex, though of course a certain 
number of quite good genera exist in both groups. The new 
genera had been made so unrestrainedly that they soon over- 
apped one another, and the more species there were discovered 
the sooner it became obvious that such genera were W olly 
artificial. 
_ The numerous papers by. Theobald are too well know? to 
culicidologists to need mention, but his elaborate Monograph 
' Ree. Ind. Mus. IV, 53 (1910 
2 Id. X, 15 (1914), _ 
8 Published in « i : aa search, 
Vol. TIT (1908), in ‘Studies from the Institute for Medical Re 
