Mosquitoes and Malaria; A Summary of Knowledge on the Subject Up to Date with an Account of the Natural History of Some Mosquitoes

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 Excerpt: ...even before it is quite dead, and I have, on several occasions, watched the older and stronger ones devour the younger or more sickly. I recently discovered, in a building in Bombay, a number of fire-buckets, each containing, apparently, sweet water; and in each of these were living scores of Culex larvae, in many stages of growth. What did they live upon? Mr. Hankin, Bacteriologist to the Government of the North-West Provinces of India, suggested that they lived on bacteria and tend to purify the water; but, in view of the facts above stated, it seems not unlikely that they lived mainly on each other. The Habitat of the Larva of Anopheles.--Anopheles is a puddle-or even a stream-breeding mosquito. It selects small slow runnels containing algae or green flocculent water-weed, or small puddles, or even stagnant collections of water containing green algae. Never, as far as my experience goes, does it select sewage or foul water to breed in, as Culex does. In sewage and foul water, algae do not grow. The larva of Anopheles is also, to some extent, cannibalistic. If the water in a tumbler in which some have been kept without food for some days be stirred up, the little black heads of the departed ones will appear at the surface as circumstantial evidence of the cannibalistic propensities of those remaining. Small pools or puddles on level ground, which never dry up because fed from some small spring oozing out of higher ground, are said to be best suited for the growth of algae and, therefore, also for the breeding of Anopheles. Places likely to be dried up or scoured out by rain will not suit them; nor do places in which the water runs fast or contains fish. The habitat varies greatly, however, according to the climate and temperature. Grassi has asserted that...