  Little boys and girls believe that all mosquitoes sting and bite. But they do not. The male mosquito never does. He wears a plume on his head, and does nothing but dance in the sunshine. It is the female mosquito that sings around our heads at night and keeps us awake. It is she who bites us. Look at her head. This is the way it looks under a microscope. Do you wonder that her bite hurts? MOSQUITO’S HEAD UNDER A MICROSCOPE. She lays her eggs in a very queer way. First she finds a puddle or a pool of warmish water. Then she fastens herself to some stick, or sliver, or stem, or floating leaf, by her first two rows of legs. Then she lays about three hundred tiny eggs. The eggs cling together in the shape of a boat or canoe, and float upon the water. In about three days they hatch. Then the warm water is full of “wigglers.” By and by these wigglers have wings. The outside skin bursts open. They lift their heads and shoulders out of the water. Then off they fly—a whole swarm of singing, stinging mosquitoes. I suppose you think if you lived in a cold country, you would not be troubled by mosquitoes. But in Lapland, a very cold country, the mosquitoes come in crowds and clouds. Sometimes they are so thick they hide people in the road like a fog. What do you think of that? |
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