Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 105, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1899 — MOSQUITOES LIVE TWO MONTHS [ARTICLE]

MOSQUITOES LIVE TWO MONTHS

Dr. Bancroft of Bnrpengairjr Makes a Study of the Little Pests. Dr. T. L. Bancroft, of Burpengary, writes an interesting letter to the Australasian Medical Gazette on the life history of the house mosquito, an insect which recent work upon malarian infection has elevated into scientific Importance. This mosquito, It is thought, has been introduced into Australia from Europe. Tradition says that a mosquito lives a day or two; that it feeds only once, afterward retiring to some quiet spot, where the ova are matured, the in water, after which It dies, and that the male mosquito does not feed, and that it Is rare .that It lives seven days after the meal of blood. The Investigations of Dr. Bancroft into filarial metamorphosis tallies exactly with those of Dr. Manson In respect to the metamorphosis, except in one important item. Dr. Bancroft had never seen the actively moving filaria, or thread-worms, the last stage of the metamorphosis, but this he attributes to the fact that mosquitoes want to be fed, and that bls'died from starvation about the sixth day and before the filariae had developed. In confinement it Is necessary to feed mosquities. Various methods and foods were tried by Dr. Bancroft with little success, until ripe bananas were given, which proved to be suitable; it was noticed that male and female mosquitoes sucked the juice of the banana almost every day. It was also found that mosquitoes would live in glass vessels up to two months; the life of a mosq'ulto Is therefore not one or two days, but a month at least, and frequently two months. The embryo filariae, Dr. Bancroft says, when It is taken into the mosquito’s stomach, measures 1-90 inch in length by 1-3,000 inch in breadth; on the seventeenth day it measures 1-15 Inch by 1-1,000 Inch, and is not killed when put Into water. He believes that water Is the medium by which the young filariae are transformed to the human host, and he suggests that experiments with a pardon as a reward should be made upon life-sentenced prisoners.