They are insects with long slender legs; delicate narrow wings folded down over an elongate body; the head is provided with a proboscis projecting below. The proboscis is adapted for sucking blood, though many of the bush species seldom or never taste blood and obtain their nutriment from the sap or moisture upon plants. The male mosquito is a more delicate creature than the female, furnished with plumose antennae; he does not bite, but hides away in dark sheltered corners taking no food in his short life of four or five days, but has a low droning hum, noticeable when a number are disturbed. The larger females on the other hand swarm into the house, and bite whenever they get the chance. She lays her eggs in little boat shaped masses of elongate eggs, which within 24 hours give birth to larvae that are often called water-fleas or “wrigglers.” Thread-like in form at first, the “wriggler” has a rounded ciliate head, and the tip of the body is provided with a pair of tubular breathing appendages. They move about with a series of jerks, always coming to the surface head downward; they increase in size rapidly and in seven or eight days are full grown, when they change into pupae, the creatures becoming quite different; the head and thorax are drawn up into a rounded mass with two trumpet shaped horns, which are its new breathing tubes, rising upon the sides. The abdominal segments are short and turn downward; and though it does wriggle slightly, it usually rests in an upright position floating close to the surface; it remains in this state for two or three days, when the pupal skin splits along the top of the head, and the perfect insect emerges, using the floating skin as a raft from which to rise into the air and fly away. Only 9 species of mosquitoes had been described from Australia when Skuse commenced his work on these insects in the Macleay Museum Collections (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1889), where he listed all the known species and added 19 new ones. Since then Theobald, in his “Monograph of the Culicidae of the World” 1900–1903, with a great deal more material to study, revised the genera, made several of Skuse’s species synonymous, and described others, bringing our list to about 34 species.