71 
Food of Adult Mosquitoes. 
Not only in the Arctic Circle, to which I have referred, but 
in America also are vast stretches of swampy land into which 
Professor Howard tells us warm-blooded animals never find their 
way and in which mosquitoes are breeding in countless numbers. 
Sir William MacGregor tells us * that he camped “ for weeks 
at a time in the mud and swamps of the western or Anopheles 
country (of British New Guinea), and yet left without any cases 
of fever." The reason is that for some hundred and fifty miles 
of coast there were no human inhabitants, which would seem to 
show that human blood diet is not necessary to the hatching of 
Anopheles. 
With regard to these habits, with one or two exceptions it is 
the female alone that sucks blood. Ficalbi tells us that in 
S. fasciata (his C. elegans ) the male bites as persistently as the 
female, and in a few other cases this has been noticed. 
Why they should draw blood at all and what causes pre¬ 
dominate this sanguinary habit are unknown. The statement 
previously quoted regarding the development of the fertile eggs 
must not, I think, be taken into too much account when we 
consider the subject in a wider sense, as large tracts of land 
exist where mosquitoes flourish and yet warm-blooded animals 
are absent. Certainly locality has nothing to do with this 
habit, for we notice mosquitoes to be just as annoying in Arctic 
regions, in parts where man has never been before, as in tropical 
climates. It is not heat alone that influences them, except that 
they breed more rapidly in warm than in cold weather, but in 
such creatures as C. nigripes quite as vast swarms occur on the 
snow-clad Himalayas and Arctic regions as those of C. fatigans 
and others in tropical climes. ' 
That the Culicidae are phytophagous I fully believe; the 
blood-loving habits of the female and sometimes of the male are 
secondary acquired habits, which some species have developed 
more than others. 
But besides sucking human blood and the blood of warm¬ 
blooded animals and vegetable fluids, Culicidae have been 
definitely observed drawing out the body juices of numerous 
invertebrates and cold-blooded animals. I have on two occa¬ 
sions seen small Culicidae ( C . nigrilulus) sucking at the body of 
Chironomus and other small Diptera. Professor Howard, in 
his interesting Report f sent me, states that the late Hr. H. A. 
* Journal Tropical Medicine, no. 27, vol. iii. p. G3. 
f Bull. 25, Dept. Agriculture, Entomology, p. 13. Howard (1900). 
