INTRODUCTION. 
A number of articles and notes concerning mosquitoes have been 
published in different bulletins of this Division. The most extensive 
was the leading article in Bulletin No. 4, New Series (**The Principal 
Household Insects of the United States”), and constituted the larger 
part of chapter 1, on ‘‘ Mosquitoes and Fleas.” In this treatment of 
mosquitoes the complete life history of Culex pungens was given, based 
upon original observations made in the summer of 1895, and some gen- 
eral remarks on the subject of other species were brought together. 
Four pages were devoted to the subject of remedies, and the mosquitoes 
of the country at large were tabulated, with such notes on geographical 
distribution as could be brought together. The earlier notes pub- 
lished by the Division, including those extracts from correspondence 
and general notes which had been published in the seven volumes of 
Insect Life, and the writer’s two articles on the use of kerosene against 
mosquito larvee, were all digested in this bulletin, which was published 
in the summer of 1896. Subsequent brief notes on remedies have been 
published by the writer in miscellaneous bulletins of the Division and 
in the Scientific American, and the life history of Anopheles quadrima- 
culatus was described, in comparison with that of Culex pungens, in a 
short illustrated article in the Scientific American for July 7, 1900. ° 
The writer first became interested in mosquitoes thirty years or 
more ago, when as a boy he fished and collected insects in the marshes 
at the head of Cayuga Lake, New York, and as early as 1867 had 
experimented with the kerosene remedy against mosquito larvee in a 
horse trough at Ithaca. In1881 he discussed with Dr. A. F. A. King and 
the late C. V. Riley the bearings of the theory, which Dr. King was 
the first to bring forward in the United States, of the probable rela- 
tion between mosquitoes and malaria, both Dr. Riley and the writer 
contending, it must be confessed, that the arguments brought forward 
by Dr. King in conversation were based upon coincidental observations, 
and afforded no good proof of cause and effect. 
The writer’s practical demonstration in 1894 of the value of the 
kerosene treatment as a practical large-scale remedy attracted consid- 
erable attention to the subject of remedies for mosquitoes, and many 
large-scale experiments were made, some of them being successful to 
a marked degree, as will be pointed out later in the section on rem- 
edies. The services of the members of this office force were called 
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