The vices and virtues of the mosquito may be summed up in a few words, always remembering that it is the female, and not the male, to whom humanity is indebted for lessons of patience.  The female mosquito deposits about three hundred eggs, nearly the shape of a grain of wheat, arranging and gluing them perpendicularly side by side, until the whole resembles a solid, canoe-like body, which floats about on the surface of the water.  Press this little boat of eggs deep into the water, and its buoyancy causes it to rise immediately to the surface, where it maintains its true position of a well-ballasted craft, right side up.  The warmth of the sun, tempered with the moisture of the water, soon hatches the eggs, and the larva, as wigglers or wrigglers, descend to the bottom of the quiet pool, and feed upon the decaying vegetable matter.  It moves actively through the stagnant water in its passage to the surface, aerifying it, and at the same time doing faithfully its work as scavenger by consuming vegetable germs and putrefying matter.  Professor G. F. Sanborn, and other leading American entomologists, assert that the mosquito saves from twenty-five to forty per cent. in our death-list among those who are exposed to malarial influences.

With malaria, the curse of large districts in the United States, sowing its evil seeds broadcast in our land, and daily closing its iron grasp upon its victims, who could wish for the extermination of so useful an insect as the mosquito?

When the larva reaches the surface of the water, it inhales, through a delicate tube at the lower end of its body, all the air necessary for its respiration.  Having lived three or four weeks in the water, during which time it has entered the pupa state, the original skin is cast oft; and the insect is transformed into a different and more perfect state.  A few days later the epidermis of the pupa falls oft; and floats upon the water, and upon this light raft the insect dries its body in the warm rays of the sun; its damp and heavy form grows lighter and more ethereal; it slowly spreads its delicate wings to dry, and soon rises into the clear ether a perfected being.

The male mosquitoes retire to the woods, and lead an indolent, harmless life among the flowers and damp leaves.  They are not provided with a lancet, and consequently do not feed upon blood, but suck up moisture through the little tubes nature has given them for that purpose.  They are a quiet, well-behaved race, and do not even sing; both the music and the sting being reserved for the other sex.  They rarely enter the abodes of man, and may be easily identified by their heavy, feathery antenn and long maxillary palpi.