The Mosquito will be our first choice. As she leaps off from her light bark, the cast chrysalis skin of her early life beneath the waters, and sails away in the sunlight, her velvety wings fringed with silken hairs, and her neatly bodiced trim figure (though her nose is rather salient, considering that it is half as long as her entire body), present a beauty and grace of form and movement quite unsurpassed by her dipterous allies. She draws near and softly alights upon the hand of the charmed beholder, subdues her trumpeting notes, folds her wings noiselessly upon her back, daintily sets down one foot after the other, and with an eagerness chastened by the most refined delicacy for the feelings of her victim, and with the air of Velpeau redivivus, drives through crushed and bleeding capillaries, shrinking nerves and injured tissues, a many-bladed lancet of marvellous fineness, of wonderful complexity and fitness. While engorging herself with our blood, we will examine under the microscope the mosquito's mouth. The head (Fig. 61) is rounded, with the two eyes occupying a large part of the surface, and nearly meeting on the top of the head. Out of the forehead, so to speak, grow the long, delicate, hairy antennm (_a_), and just below arises the long beak which consists of the bristle-like maxillae (_mx_, with their palpi, _mp_) and mandibles (_m_), and the single hair-like labrum, these five bristle-like organs being laid in the hollowed labium (_l_). Thus massed into a single awl-like beak, the mosquito, without any apparent effort, thrusts them all except the labium into the flesh. Her hind body may be seen tilling with the red blood, until it cries quits, and the insect withdraws its sting and flies sluggishly away. In a moment the wounded parts itch slightly, though a very robust person may not notice the irritation, or a more delicate individual if asleep; though if weakened by disease, or if stung in a highly vascular and sensitive part, such as the eyelid, the bite becomes really a serious matter. Multiply the mosquito a thousand fold, and one flees their attacks and avoids their haunts as he would a nest of hornets. Early in spring the larva (Fig. 62, A) of the mosquito may be found in pools and ditches. It remains at the bottom feeding upon decaying matter (thus acting as a scavenger, and in this state doing great benefit in clearing swamps of miasms), until it rises to the surface for air, which it inhales through a single respiratory tube (_c_) situated near the tail. When about to transform into the pupa state, it contracts and enlarges anteriorly near the middle, the larval skin is thrown off, and the insect appears in quite a different form (Fig. 62, a). The head and thorax are massed together, the rudiments of the mouth parts and of the wings and legs being folded upon the breast, while there are two breathing tubes (_d_) situated upon the back instead of the tail, which ends in two broad paddles (_a_); so