1847. ] Winter Insects of Eastern New York. 9 
The Winter Musketoe is met with in the last days of autumn 
and again for a short time in the first days of spring, and speci- 
mens are occasionally found in any of the winter months. It is 
a somewhat rare insect, which no one can fail to distinguish clear- 
ly by the marks on its wings as above described. 
6. Curronomus nivortunpus. The Snow-born Midge. 
Black; poisers obscure-brown; wings pellucid-cinereous, their 
anterior neryures blackish. 
Length about 0.15 to the tip of the abdomen in the males; fe- 
males a third shorter. 
This species is black throughout, and clothed with fine black 
hairs. The thorax has three slightly elevated longitudinal ridges 
immediately forward of the scutel. The wings, when tlie insect 
is at rest, are held against the sides of the abdomen, often verti- 
cally in the males, but more commonly in the females with their 
inner margins in contact, thus forming a steep roof covering the 
back. They are diaphanous, of a cinereous tinge, and feebly 
iridescent. Their inner margins towards their bases are slightly 
arcuated. The submarginal or postcostal nervures, those which 
bound the closed basillary cell, and which proceed from this cell 
to the margin, are particularly obvious, being of a blackish color, 
excepting the nerve which proceeds from the inner angle of this 
cell to the apex of the wing, which, with the nervures inside of 
it, scarcely differ in color from the surface which they ramify. 
The poisers are obscure-brownish, truncated at their apices, the 
capitulum being in the form of a reversed triangle. The abdomen 
in the females is shorter than the wings, somewhat compressed, 
approaching to an ovate form when viewed laterally, with the 
venter often of a dull brownish tinge: in the males it projects be- 
yond the tips of the wings, is slender, cylindrical or very slighly 
tapered towards the tip, with some of the terminal segments sepa- 
rated by a strong contraction. 
This is a very common species, appearing upon the snow in the 
winter season, and upon fences, windows, &c., in the fore part of 
spring, the males and the females being about equally numerous. 
The beautiful plumose antenne of the former distinguish them at 
a glance from all other insects abroad at this season. At times 
they may be met with in immense swarms. April 27th 1846, in 
a forest, for the distance of a fourth of a mile, they occurred in 
such countless myriads as to prove no small annoyance to the 
fees getting into his mouth, nostrils and ears at every step, and 
iterally covering his clothing. These had probably hatched from 
the marshy border of an adjoining lake, on this and the preceding 
days, the weather having been remarkably warm and dry. The 
wings appear to be more hyaline and iridescent in those individu- 
