260 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



poses, or which might be used for suburban residences, could be 

 placed on the market. There are many depressions in salt and 

 other marshes and also on dry land which can be readily trans- 

 formed from pernicious breeding places to harmless soil by a 

 little filling. Ditching, digging and filling may be regarded as 

 permanent methods of doing away with the mosquito nuisance. 

 This is not always possible, and it is then necessary to resort to 

 temporary measures, such as spraying breeding places with petro- 

 leum, in order to destroy the larvae. The succession in the hatch- 

 ing of the eggs of the salt marsh mosquito, and the several 

 generations produced by Culex pipiens in fresh waters, 

 render the repetition of this petrolizing or treatment with oil 

 necessary at more or less regular intervals throughout the breed- 

 ing season. It is more costly in the long run than the more per- 

 manent measures and can be recommended only as a temporary 

 expedient. 



The natural enemies of mosqultos are of considerable value in 

 this warfare, and this is particularly true of the small fish men- 

 tioned in a preceding paragraph. It not infrequently happens 

 that a fresh or salt water pool affords ideal conditions for the 

 production of millions of mosquitos, a state of affairs that can be 

 easily remedied by the introduction of some of these fish. They 

 may be brought from some distance in the case of isolated pools, 

 but there are many easily connected with fish-inhabited bodies, 

 \\'here even this would not be necessary. 



CULICIDAE 



Mosquitos are so familiar to most people that a scientific defini- 

 tion of them hardly seems necessary. The most characteristic 

 feature of the adult is the presence of hairlike scales along the 

 veins and margins of the wings. The females of our common 

 species are easily recognized by their hum and bite, while the 

 innoxious males, rarely seen in nature, have conspicuous feathery 

 or plumose antennae. 



These small insects may be separated from closely allied flies 

 by the long, slender abdomen, narrow wings, the plumose an- 



