THE MALARIA MOSQUITO. 1 



By B. E. Dahlgren, D.M.I). 



Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Zoology. 



Introduction. 



THE word "mosquito," .supposedly of West Indian origin, is the 

 Spanish diminutive of "mosca," a fly, and the name is correctly 

 applied, since mosquitoes belong to the order of two-winged 

 insects, or true flies, Diptera. They constitute the family Culicidse, of 

 which some four hundred fifty species are known at the present time. 



Since the discovery of the agency of mosquitoes in the spreading of 

 malaria and yellow fever, they have received a great deal of attention, 



and new species are constantly bein^; found. The great „. ., . 



-ii i • ,,..,.. Distnbution 



majority are tropical, but their range ot distribution is 



nearly universal, extending from the Equator northward and southward, 



over the temperate zones into the arctic and antarctic regions. About 



forty species have been described from the neighborhood of New York. 



Though mosquitoes occur in general in low and swampy districts, 



they are also recorded from high altitudes, and Stephens and Christopher 



in a Report to the Malaria Commission of the Royal Society, state that 



they are troublesome in the Himalayas at a height of 13,000 feet. A well 



known malarial species is recorded by them at 5,000 feet. In the United 



States mosquitoes are numerous not only along the coasts, in the low- 



lving regions of the South and on the plains and prairies, but also in 



many places in the woods of the Adirondack^ and Rocky Mountains. 



In Alaska, on the coast of Greenland and on the tundras of the North 



where other insects are few, thev at times constitute a severe scourffe, 



and Arctic explorers relate accounts of mosquitoes on the snow which 



make a New Jersey swamp seem a desirable resort. Xansen, quoted by 



Theobald, states that at high latitudes, they literally covered the hands 



of the voyagers like "rough woolen gloves." In ancient Greece, and in 



Asia Minor, entire cities 2 were abandoned by their inhabitants, who were 



'Guide Leaflet No. -7 of the American Museum Series. 



- Mionte in Ionia, Pergamo in Asia. Howard, .Mosquitoes, p. 40. 



