Mosquito

mos-ke'to, a family of annoying insects allied to the fly. The name is Spanish, meaning a little fly. The body is slender, the legs are long, the wings are narrow and fringed with hair. The mouth parts are produced into a firm, slender, overly-long bill or proboscis. So far as observed, mosquitoes breed in water, yet it is believed they also breed in moist earth. The female lays long, slender eggs on the surface of the water. The larvae on hatching descend into the water. They are called "wigglers." As seen in a rain barrel the wiggler hangs head downward with the tail at the surface breathing through a tube rising from the last segment (joint) but one of the abdomen. In the third or pupa state, contrary to the usual custom of insects, the mosquito is active and can be told from the wiggler most readily by its large head and club-shaped body. When the pupa is full grown it waits for a quiet moment, floats on the surface of the water, splits its skin from end to end and, standing on the old skin like a raft--a critical moment, for a breath of air would upset the craft--unfolds its wings, allows them to harden for a moment, and takes flight.

Dr. Lugger, of Minnesota, found 17,259 eggs and wigglers in one barrel of rainwater and 19,110 in another. From ten to thirty-seven days are required to hatch the egg and develop the full grown mosquito, according to species. Ordinarily, the adult lives from eight to twelve days. Certain females with eggs lie dormant over winter. Late wigglers caught in the ice thaw out in the spring and complete their growth.

The wigglers glean decaying vegetable matter from stagnant water, and in this way perhaps they do some good as scavengers. The male adults content themselves with similar food,--some think they search flowers for nectar. The females with eggs to lay are ravenous for blood. The floor of the mouth and the upper lip are extended enormously in the shape of a long, firm tube with which the female penetrates the skin of man and beast. Having gorged herself with blood pumped up through this tube, the insect injects a drop of poisonous saliva before withdrawing her bill. It is this poison, not the puncture, that causes the painful swelling known as a mosquito bite.

Smoke of any kind annoys mosquitoes. Smudges of dry wood or hay at the center, smothered with slow burning green weeds, foliage, or wet chips, are the most efficient. Oil of pennyroyal rubbed on the exposed parts of the body does some good. Extensive experiments are being carried on by way of flooding swamps with a film of kerosene to prevent the breeding of wigglers. When the wiggler rises to breathe the slightest amount of oil touching the tube causes death. It now seems well established that a certain mosquito communicates the germs of malarial fever. Another causes yellow fever. It is some comfort to know that mosquitoes diminish in numbers as a country is opened up to cultivation.

There are many species. Seventeen kinds have been identified in Minnesota. Mosquitoes are found the world over. They rise in swarms during the short arctic summer. They infest the tropics. They annoy the climber 13,000 feet up the Himalaya Mountains.

See Malaria; Yellow Fever; Fly; Midge

If quite protected against infant mortality and untoward accidents, a single pair of mosquitoes not only can, but inevitably will, become the ancestors of 10,000,000,000 descendants during the waxing and waning of two summer moons. Mother mosquito lays 400 eggs at a time. They float in clusters like tiny rafts along the edges of stagnant ponds. In a couple of days the eggs hatch, and out of each swims a small wiggler. It takes about five days for the wiggler to feel the need of a change. Then he sheds his skull and his face and a few other portions of his anatomy, folds what is left up into a tight little bundle, and waits three days longer before floating up to the top of the water and taking to the air as a full fledged adult. And then, within forty-eight hours, each of the new-hatched females will do her duty in the egg-laying line. Once the first brood of 400 is at work it would take the experts of the Steeel Trust to figure out the increase for thirty days.

Fortunately for man, in his effort to extirpate the race, a great many of the egg-boats are destroyed before hatching. Then the small wigglers have the pleasing habit of biting off pieces of their sisters and brothers; and many a pupa, aspiring to flight, has been caught by a ripple on the surface of the water and drowned before it could shake out its filmy wings; which is why mosquitoes are found near small and stagnant ponds or puddles and never in the vicinity of running streams or bodies of water exposed to the violence of the wind. Wigglers by the million are also eaten by small fish and by dragon flies, though the latter are too fond of basking idly in the sun to live up to their possibilities in the devouring line and be real aids in the business of extermination.--Henry M. Hyde in Technical World.