Food of Adult Mosquitoes. 09 
mature, and seem to be little affected by the hardest frosts. As 
they possess no air-tubes such as in Culex and Anopheles we can 
readily see that they suffer little inconvenience when the water 
is coated with ice. 
FOOD OF ADULT MOSQUITOES, 
Until the researches of Manson, Bancroft, Boss, Grassi, and 
others proved the part played by the genera Anopheles and Culex 
in malaria and fjlariasis,* mosquitoes were only of importance on 
account of their annoying biting habits. Their thirst for blood 
is proverbial. Even in our own country one often hears outcries 
and wonderful statements regarding the arrival from abroad of 
hosts of mosquitoes. They are always with us to the number of 
twenty-six species, but it is apparently only some that have a 
thirst for blood, and those species only at certain times. 
Members of the genera Culex , Stegomyia, Panoplites, 
Uranotaenia, W'yeomyia, and Anopheles have similar tastes. By 
far the most usual food is vegetable food. I have frequently 
seen Culicidae settled on Compositae , sucking the juices of the 
flowers, both males and females. Major Ross and others point 
out how they may be found and kept alive on banana slices. 
Dr. Bancroft has found that they can be kept alive on banana 
slices, but prefer fresh fruit. In the Report of the Malarial 
Expedition to West Africa this was confirmed. “ In the 
evening,” Major Ross says, “ they (the mosquitoes) began to 
fly about and walk over the fruit, plunging their probosces into 
it in many places, so that the banana was sometimes covered 
with the gnats both male and female.” From St. Lucia and 
other places their preference for banana has been recorded. In 
England I have observed C. pipiens in numbers feeding off 
decaying apples. 
There is little doubt but that many species live exclusively 
on vegetable diet, or anyhow the blood of animals otherwise than 
man. Comparatively few must be the chances of C. nigripes, 
Zett., getting a meal of even vertebrate blood, much less human 
blood, in the Arctic Circle, yet these creatures abound, and also 
on the high plateau of India. That many Culicidae take the 
blood of invertebrate animals is well known. 
* Journal Tropical Medicine, Nov. 1899. 
