All large brilliant mosquitoes with long palpi in both sexes and, as a rule, with a caudal fan of scales; the proboscis is long and bent. They are all sylvan species, and are not so far recorded as biting man.
Genus. Toxorhynchites, Theobald.
“Mono. Culicid.,” 1901, i, p. 244; 1903, iii, p. 119; 1907, iv, p. 140; 1910, v, p. 95.
Differs from the former genus in that the female palpi are short. The palpi may have one, two or three minute terminal segments. Banks’s genus Worcesteria has three.
The elephant mosquito of India (T. immisericors), Walker, bites very severely. They are sylvan species.
Sub-family. Culicinæ.
Genus. Mucidus, Theobald.
“Mono. Culicid.,” 1901, i, p. 268; 1910, v, p. 125.
This genus is so far confined to Australia, West and Central Africa, India, East Indies and Malay Peninsula. They are all large mosquitoes, easily told by the whole body being more or less covered with long twisted scales, giving them a mouldy appearance, and the legs densely scaled with outstanding scales; the wings with large parti-coloured scales. The Australian M. alternans, Walker, occurs in larval form both in fresh and salt water. The adults bite man.