The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1873-05-30
The Mosquito.

Come, my little children, / have the
microscope for you. One by one you
will take your turn in looking through
it, and then L will explain to you the
parts of the object. You all pronounce
belongs to the same family as the house
fly, or, as we call it, the blue-bottle fly,
and is a cousin to these and all other
flies.
This is gnat, or mosquito, and it be-
gins in the egg, like all other flies and
and butterflies and moths. If you look
closely into water, not Croton water,
but rain water or cistern water that has
been exposed to the open air and sun
few days, you will find clusters of little
white bodies floating upon the surface
these are eggs of the mosquito, glued
together in these little masses by the
mosquito when she laid them few
days and you will not see those eggs,
but many little wrigglers, as the chill
dren call them-you know they wriggle
and dart about in the water very rapidly,
and if you go near and look into the
water, or touch the surface with any
thing, how they will dart down almost
out of sight These are Matched out of
the egg, and we call them the larv@-a
single one is called larva.
Could you see that larvae under the
microscope you will find it to have a
large head, covered with coarse hairs, or
bristles, a large mouth and two feelers
or horns coming out of it's head, by
which it draws the little specks of in
sects, too small for us to see, into its
mouth for food. Then it has all along,
on each side of its body, little tufts of
hair like paint brushes, and at the lower
end of the body there are two tubes or
horns one of these is a breathing tube,
and if you go very carefully to the water
you will see the little animals with their
head down and this breathing tube
very little out of the water they have
come up to get air TO breathe they can
go under water after this and stay
short time, but are obliged to come up
every few minutes, when they turn them
selves upside down again in this manner.
The other tube at the lower end of the
body has three or four little blades or
paddles, surrounded by a pretty large
tuft of hairs these they use as oars.
When the larva is Matched from the
egg it is very small, but as it grows its
body soon becomes too large for its skin,
which it throws off, because it has
new and larger one already prepared for
it beneath the old one for its skin is
not a part of the body like ours, but
something like your teeth; the new skin
grows and pushes off the old one, as
your new teeth grow and push out of the
way the old ones. They change their
skin four times in two or three weeks,
and the last time take another form
which makes the larva fold itself up so
that it's head is very large and its body
much shorter, and instead of one breath
ing tube at the lower end OF the body,
it now has two smaller ones on the front
of the head, like a donkey's ears. In
this state it takes no food, for this is the
pupa, or sleeping state, and after few
days, at least, it comes to the surface of
the water, throws itself upon its back,
and in few moments the skin slips
open at the head, and the motion of the
insect within lengthens the crack, when
you see the head pushing out then it
rises then the insect lifts out it's fore
legs and then draws out more of its
body, until you see it standing straight
up in its old skin, or boat, like the mast
and sail of fishing smack. Now our
little insect is in the greatest danger of
being drowned, for if the wind blows or
anything else ruffles the surface, causing
the boat to dip water, or in any way to
wet the insect, it is death to it. You
will often see great numbers of dead
mosquitoes floating upon the water they
were drowned before they were born.
When the insect comes out of the old
skin, it is altogether different from any
previous state before it had no legs,
now it has six long, slender legs then
1T had two small eyes, now it has great
numbers of eyes in two large clusters
almost covering the small head, and
which are sometimes green and others
red before it had no wings, now it has
two beautiful wings covered with scales,
as Is also the whole body then it had
n large mouth and ate insects when a
larva, and when pupa no mouth ut all.
and, OF course, ate nothing now it has
a long trunk or proboscis, something
like an elephants trunk, which contains
six little sword-blades, with which the
mosquito pierces our skin when it stings
us. The mode is this
/ When the insect alights upon per-
| son, it sets the mouth of its long trunk
upon the skin, then opens it, for it is
split from one end to the other, runs
out the sword-blades with which the
: mosquito pierces our skin, and at the
, same time throws drop of clear liquid
into the puncture or hole made by the
lancet. The fluid is to thin the blood
so that the mosquito can suck it by the
lips of the trunk but the fluid is poison