2 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 
the summer months in the Northern States is undoubtedly Culex territans, 
which is the only species breeding abundantly in a certain class of fresh-water 
marshes and pools at that season. We now know that this species does not annoy 
man (in spite of its name), and are enabled to state that such fresh-water 
marshes and ponds are not breeding-places of noxious mosquitoes. 
Therefore, realizing the imperfect character of our knowledge and especially 
the very great need of a competent monograph of the species of Culicide of 
North and Central America and the West Indies, both from the biological and 
the sanitary points of view, application was made, in April, 1902, to the 
Carnegie Institution of Washington, for a grant which should enable the prepa- 
tation of a monograph to include all possible information concerning all mos- 
quitoes of the geographical regions just mentioned. 
The grant requested was made by the Trustees of the Institution in January, 
1903, and organization work was at once begun. It was at first expected that the 
monograph could be completed in three years, and the grants made by the In- 
stitution covered that period. At the expiration of the third year, however, it 
was found that the material was by no means complete. Too much reliance had 
been placed upon the promises of volunteer observers, and important regions 
were, for this reason, not properly covered. The workers engaged in the prepara- 
tion of the monograph were not content to publish the material accumulated, 
since it was their earnest desire to make the work as complete as possible and as 
valuable as possible to biologists and to sanitarians. The investigations were, 
therefore, continued during 1906, 1907, and 1906, partly by the help of funds 
appropriated to the U. S. Department of Agriculture by Congress for the in- 
vestigation of insects affecting the health of man and animals, partly by the 
assistance of the Isthmian Canal Commission, partly by the help of volunteer 
observers in the West Indies and Central America, and partly at the expense of 
two of the authors (Dr. Dyar and Mr. Knab). While it is realized that the 
present work is incomplete, the additions gained by the work of the last few 
years has surely more than doubled its value. 
In planning the work in the early months of 1903, it was decided to secure 
local observers advantageously situated in the different faunal areas of the 
United States, and to compensate them for observations during the summer 
months, in the course of which each should make as complete a collection as 
possible of the mosquitoes of the region in which he was located, should rear 
each species in all its different stages, and should submit all specimens and com- 
plete notes, with sketches, at the completion of the season. During the first 
year there were employed for this purpose Miss Isabel McCracken, of Stanford 
University, a graduate student and assistant of Prof. V. L. Kellogg ; Mr. Fred- 
erick Knab, of Chicopee, Massachusetts (one of the present authors) ; Mr. 0. 
A. Johannsen, of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Mrs. E. @. Hinds. at 
Victoria, Texas; Mr. John R. Taylor, of Las Animas Hospital, Havana, Chibex 
Dr. H. G. Dyar, of the U. S. National Museum (one of the present authors), at 
Kaslo, British Columbia; Mr. T. H. Coffin, of the Johns Hopkins Medical 
School, in the Bahama Islands; and Mr. Kenneth Taylor, at Minneapolis 
Minnesota. , 
