MOSQUITOES AND THEIR 
RELATION TO DISEASE ; 
THEIR LIFE-HISTORY, HABITS 
AND CONTROL. 
',) ? 
There has bee ^ „ mosquito is a particular 
species of insec .biting the tropics. This idea, however, is very 
far from the exact truth. There are, in reality, about a thousand 
different kinds of mosquitoes known, and they inhabit every 
country of the world; in Britain we have no fewer than eighteen 
different kinds. The term mosquito, which is really synonymous 
with the English gnat, is used to denote any two-winged fly with 
a long blood-sucking proboscis projecting from the front of the 
head, and with wings, the veins of which are arranged on the 
same plan as in the common house-gnat. The term might, 
perhaps, be restricted further and applied to the females only of 
these insects, since it is members of that sex which alone suck 
blood, the males feeding—if at all—on the juices of plants. 
As may be gathered from the above definition, mosquitoe, «y 
be distinguished from other two-winged flies by the struck of 
their wings. The chief point to notice is that towards the apex of 
the wing there are two bifurcated veins separated from one another 
by a single simple vein; apart from this, the veins are covered 
with scales. These two characters combined will readily distin¬ 
guish mosquitoes from all other flies, such as midges or small 
daddy-long-legs, for which they might possibly be mistaken, but 
their slender build, long legs and long biting proboscis mark them 
off at once from other biting flies. 
