There, as
Reaumur said, possibly one gnat in every hundred may be able to gratify
its appetite for blood; but of the gnats in many districts in South
America it would be nearer the mark to say that only one in a hundred
millions can ever do so.
Curtis discovered that only the female mosquito bites or sucks blood,
the male being without tongue or mandibles; and he asks, What, then,
does the male feed on? He conjectures that it feeds on flowers; but, had
he visited some swampy places in hot countries, where flowers are few
and the insects more numerous than the sands on the seashore, he would
most probably have said that the males subsist on decaying vegetable
matter and moisture of slime. It is, however, more important to know
what the female subsists on. We know that she thirsts for warm mammalian
blood, that she seeks it with avidity, and is provided with an admirable
organ for its extraction--only, unfortunately for her, she does not get
it, or, at all events, the few happy individuals that do get it are
swamped in the infinite multitude of those that are doomed by nature to
total abstinence.
I should like to know whether this belief of Curtis, shared by Westwood
and other distinguished entomologists, but originally put forward merely
as a conjecture, has ever been tested by careful observation and
experiment. If not, then it is strange that it should have crept into
many important works, where it is stated not as a mere guess, but as an
established fact.
Pages:
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148