General Notes. 7 
for I defy anyone to identify in the field a specimen from the 
description or appearance of a balsam-preparation. For working 
purposes we must retain the old entomological method of pre- 
paring and keeping these insects in their adult stage. Now, if 
we do this, the palpal characters are of very doubtful value, for 
in anything like a good specimen we cannot see the number of 
joints, which are hidden by the dense covering of scales. For 
this reason I have not paid any particular attention to these 
structures upon which Arribalzaga founded some of his genera. 
Whilst acknowledging that these structures are of value, as 
shown by my friend, I feel sure they can only be treated as of 
secondary importance on account of the difficulty of seeing the 
joints in anything like a good specimen, and, moreover, we find 
closely related species with different palpi and a great variety of 
forms of palpi amongst the section Culicina. On the other hand, 
we can easily see the minutie of scale structure in any good or 
even fair specimen, and species should not be described from 
worn and breken material, much less from balsam preparations 
alone. Palpi are of undoubted importance, but they must of 
necessity take a secondary place when, as often happens, we have 
only one or two specimens of a new species to describe. We get 
very great variation in the palpi of closely related species as 
seen in Stegomyia sugens and Stegomyia Marshall, and a close 
sunilarity in such widely different insects as Desvoidea ventralis 
and Joblotia nivipes, but by the squamose characters we can 
at once see the two former are related and the two latter 
quite distinct. Anyone acquainted with the use of a microscope 
can easily see the scale structure in any of the Culicidae, in 
many a Coddington lens will alone reveal the characters. The 
scales can be seen much more readily than the jointing of the 
palpi. Palpal characters, I feel sure, are only of help specifically 
in regard to their jointing, for we find similar forms in totally 
distinct genera. 
With regard to the nervures of the wings, we certainly 
cannot take those characters alone, for we know how extremely 
variable they are even in one batch of insects hatched from eggs 
laid by a single female (vide remarks on variability in cross-veins, 
etc., p. 9). 
In the ¢’s we find more palpal variation than in the ?’s, but 
unfortunately the male palpi shrink in death, and their exact 
form cannot be determined. The palpal character of the genus 
Theobaldia, proposed by M. Neveu-Lemaire, is much more marked 
