in the entrance gateway of the Lal Darwaza or Red Gate mosque at Jaunpur, where an arch (of two rings of ogee shape) is carried by a solid wall, built under it, which is pierced with three doorways with bracket-capitals and architraves, returning therefore to trabeated construction. The covered aisles of the court of the Jumma Musjid at Jaunpur are in three storeys with piers, bracket-capitals and architraves, bearing therefore no resemblance to the arcades of Kairawan and Cordova, and constituting a different style. There is however one feature which throughout the Mahommedan mosques in India is always found, viz. the dome. But this also in India is built in horizontal courses, so that the form only and not the construction of the Cairene domes is followed. The chief peculiarity of the mosques at Ahmedabad is that, as the style progressed, it became more Indian; in the Jumma Musjid (A.D. 1420) and the Queen’s mosque at Mirzapur, the pointed arch exists only in the façades of the prayer chambers; in the mosques built 30 to 40 years later the whole is constructed without a single arch, all the pillars have bracket-capitals, and the domes, which are of very slight elevation, are all built in the trabeated style. As a contrast to the Ahmedabad mosques, the Kadam Rasul mosque at Gaur in Bengal possesses some characteristics which resemble those of the mosque of Tulun in Cairo, possibly due to the fact that it is entirely built in brick, with massive piers carrying pointed arches.
The climax of Mahommedan work in India is reached in that of the Mogul emperors at Agra, Delhi and Fatehpur-Sikri, in which there is a very close resemblance in design to the mosques of Syria, Egypt, and Persia; the four-centred arch, which is in the Mogul style, finds general acceptance, and was probably derived from Persian sources. The mosque at Fatehpur-Sikri possesses in its great southern gateway, built by Akbar in the second half of the 16th century, the masterpiece of Indo-Saracenci architecture. As a rule, the mosques of India followed the normal plan, with a great central court and aisles round and a prayer chamber in front of the Mecca wall, which in India is always at the west end. (R. P. S.)
MOSQUITO (Span. mosquito, a gnat, diminutive of mosca, a fly), a term originally applied to many species of small blood-sucking
Diptera (q.v.), belonging to various families, but now
by common consent restricted to those known to naturalists
as Culicidae, or gnats. Before the year 1899 mosquitoes had
never been collected systematically, and had received little
notice from entomologists, so that but few genera and comparatively
few species were known. Although it had long been
suspected that these insects were in some way connected with
malaria and other diseases, While that the species now called
Stegomyia calopus was the carrier of yellow fever had been
asserted by Finlay as early as 1881, it was not until the closing
years of the 19th century that the brilliant researches of Ross in
India, and of Grassi and others in Italy, directed the attention of
the whole civilized world to mosquitoes as the exclusive agents
in the dissemination of malarial fever. The result has been that
in subsequent years mosquitoes have been collected, studied and
described by naturalists and medical men in all parts of the
globe. Nearly 100 genera and about 700 species of mosquitoes
are now recognized, but in all probability the total number of
species is not less than 1000.
 | |||
| Fig. 1. | |||
| A, | Larva of Anopheles. | F, | Female Anopheles costalis, Loew. |
| B, | Pupa of Anopheles. | G, | Head of ♀ Culex. |
| C, | Larva of Stegomyia. | H, | Head of ♂ Anopheles. |
| D, | Pupa of Culex. | J, | Head of ♂ Culex. |
| E, | Egg-float and further enlarged detached egg of Culex. |
K, | Eggs of Anopheles. |
In general appearance mosquitoes resemble many harmless midges (Chironomidae), but may be distinguished by the following characters. (1) The prolongation of the lower lip or labium into a prominent proboscis, which in the female sex contains the full complement of piercing organs found in blood-sucking Diptera, namely paired mandibles, paired maxillae, a tubular hypopharynx (the common outlet of the salivary glands), and an upper lip or labrum. (2) The presence of variously formed scales on the body and its appendages: the head is clothed with scales, the thorax with hairs or scales, and the abdomen with either hairs or scales, or both; the legs and veins of the wings are always covered with scales, and the palpi are often (as in some Anophelinae) conspicuously scaly. (3) The fact that the costal or marginal vein runs completely round the wing. The wings exhibit six longitudinal veins (seven in Heptaphlebomyia), two of which are characteristically forked. The antennae, usually bottle-brush shaped (plumose) in the male sex, are less hairy in the female. The palpi vary in form and in the number of their component segments, and the proboscis, though usually straight, may be curved (as in Megarhinus) or otherwise modified in shape.
In dividing the Culicidae into genera reliance is placed chiefly upon characters derived from the scales on the three divisions of the body and on the wings. A fairly satisfactory attempt at grouping the genera has been made by Lutz (1904), who divides the family in the first place into the Euculicidae, with a piercing proboscis (i.e. all ordinary mosquitoes), and the Culicimorphae or forms without a piercing proboscis (Mochlonyx, Corethra, &c.). It has since been proposed to treat the Culicimorphae as a distinct family under the title Corethridae, and it is probable that with this modification Lutz’s scheme will meet with general acceptance. The Euculicidae are divided into the Asiphonatae (＝Anophelinae), the larvae of which have no respiratory siphon, and the Siphonatae, or forms in which a respiratory siphon is present in the larval state. The divisions of the Siphonatae are the Ankylorhynchae (genera with curved proboscis, e.g. Megarhinus and Toxorhynchites) and Orthorhynchae (genera with straight proboscis). The latter again are divided into Metanopsilae (in which the metanotum or posterior region of the thorax is bare) and Metanotrichae (in which the metanotum is clothed with bristles or scales). The Metanopsilae are made up of the Heteropalpae [palpi long in the male, short in the female; sub-families Culicinae (Culex, &c.) and Heptaphlebomyinae (Heptaphlebomyia)] and Micropalpae [palpi short in both sexes; sub-families Aedinae (Aedes, &c.) and Haemagoginae (Haemagogus, Uranotaenia, &c.)]. The Metanotrichae are similarly divided on the basis of the palpal characters into two groups, the Heteropalpae or Hyloconopinae (Joblotia, Rhynchomyia, &c.) and Micropalpae or Dendromyinae (Wyeomyia, Sabethes, Limatus, &c.).
The old genus Anopheles (characterized by the palpi being long in both sexes) is now divided into a number of genera according to the character and shape of the scales on the different regions of the body and on the wings. These genera make up the sub-family Anophelinae, and together include over 100 species. The genus Culex, from which the family takes its name, though it has been similarly split up, is still in its restricted sense larger than any other, and some 200 species are comprised in it alone.
Mosquitoes are found in all parts of the world. Even within the Arctic Circle they are in many localities abundant and excessively bloodthirsty during the short summer. Under such conditions the deeply-rooted nature of the blood-sucking instinct is most remarkable; for insects whose ancestors for many generations may not have tasted blood will seek for it with the utmost keenness and pertinacity so soon as an opportunity presents itself. Some species are normally phytophagous, and the vast majority, at any rate, appear to be capable of continuing to exist and reproducing their kind upon a purely vegetarian diet. As a rule the blood-sucking habit is confined to the females, but in the case of a few species it is said to be common to both sexes. The thirst for blood is stimulated by heat, and in temperate climates it is only during hot weather that mosquitoes are troublesome. Some species of mosquitoes, such
