But not so with the human auditor of the mosquito prima donna who lies peacefully on his bed at night under the hypnotic spell of sweet sleep. Perchance it is midnight’s holy hour when he is suddenly awakened by a still small voice more pricking than the voice of conscience. He springs up and lights the gas or lamp and tries to draw nigh unto lady mosquito as did her enchanted knight with wings; he is thirsting for her life while she is thirsting for his blood. But not only is our heroine celebrated in history as a warrior and a vocalist, but as a most dangerous enemy of mankind. Nature has seen fit to give her a long nose, or proboscis, which, according to the Darwinian theory, might prove her to be related to the elephant. She does not hesitate “to stick her nose into other people’s business,” and this is precisely the thing which, in the case of mosquitoes as of men, leads her into irreparable injury to humanity and very frequently to her own instant demise. Those versed in the origin and evolution of the Culex (a nickname for the mosquito) teach us that his ancient grandmothers did not have the blood-sucking habit, but acquired it in later ages. Whether in acquiring this habit she was beset, like Mother Eve in Eden, by the power of a mighty temptation through the wily arts of his Satanic majesty, we are unable to say with certainty; but we are informed by her anatomists that alongside her formidable proboscis with its suction pump fixtures, are from two to six keen lances or spears, admirably adapted for making the necessary incisions in the skin of man and beast. Armed with such weapons for drawing blood, it is easy to guess how, during some of her nightly wanderings as a minstrel, temptation might have won an easy victory over her by giving her a taste of blood. It is probable that while on one of these lonely serenades she became enamored of some sleeping Apollo, and, stooping down to snatch a sweet warm kiss from his lordly brow, accidentally stuck her bill through the rosy cuticle and drew blood—taking another sip she said it was good, and thus she contracted the blood-sucking habit. It is interesting to note that as with many other nations of the air so with this one, there is a sort of national anthem to which the Culex patriots seem more devotedly attached than human patriots are to theirs. Its divine strain, to the chivalrous male, is the very keynote of love, and he is charmed by its resistless power and drawn toward it as a beetle to a beacon light, or a boat to a whirlpool; for when its clarion note is sounded, like the weird, wild melody of Orpheus of old that thrilled dumb brutes and drew them in myriads around him, he is caught up and borne onward by its powerful pull to the spot whence the music comes.