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?
[Illustration: 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.
We are all glad when the cold weather comes and the mosquito goes.
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?