5 
predominate on all the veins. The posterior margin of the 
wing carries a deep fringe of elongated, -feather-shaped 
scales {see Figs. 1, 1''). The body, legs, and palpi are also 
clothed with hairs and scales, and the tarsi {i.e., the five 
terminal joints of each leg) are frequently banded with white 
in various ways. 
The preliminary stages (huwa and pupa) of all mosquitoes 
are passed in water — generally stagnant fresh water,* whether 
clean or foul, and either in permanent ditches, ponds, or 
tanks, or in temporary pools of rain-water. Species that 
frequent houses breed in butts or tubs of min-water or in 
other vessels of water within or in the precincts of the houses 
themselves, or in cesspools which are open to the air. In the 
case of the best-known species of Culex that infest houses, 
the eggs are laid on the surface, of the water in the so-called 
“boat-shaped” masses ; specimens of various Indian species 
of Anopheles, on the other hand, kept in captivity' by Major 
Ross, I.M.S., were found never to oviposit on the water itself, 
but always upon hard surfaces (as the wall of a test-tube), 
on which the eggs were laid separately in roughly star-shaped 
groups; the inference being that in a natural state these 
forms deposit their eggs on stones in the vicinity of pools, 
into which they are washed by rain. 
The mosquito larva is a small greenish or greenish-bro^vn 
creature, with a round head, a rounded swollen thorax, and 
an elongated jointed abdomen, from near the end of which, 
in Culex, the breathing tube arises. In the pupa the head 
* Ficalbi, however, states (“ Revisione Sistematica della Famiglia Delle 
Culicidai Europee ” (Firenze, 1896), pp. 291 — 292) that “ the larvfc of the 
Culicidie can also live in salt water, and that of a degree of saltness, as in 
the case of the water of salt pans or stagnant salt-marshes, greater than 
that of the sea ; this fact may be of importance in explaining the presence 
of mosquitoes in places in which fresh water does not exist.” Again, 
Dr. T. L. Bancroft, of Burpengary, Queensland, has met with four species 
of Ciilex and one of Aiwjikrlex that breed in sea-water at Deception Bay, 
near Brisbane. It is, on the contrary, asserted by L. 0. Howard (“ The 
Principal Household Insects of the United States,” p. 20 : — U.S. Dept, of 
Agriculture, Bulletin No. 4, New Series, Washington, 1896) that ; — “Water 
that is somewhat brackish will support mosquitoes, but water which is 
purely salt will destroy them.” 
