There are two distinct species, the largest of which is brown and the smallest black.
Where they are bred cannot easily be determined for they are numerous in every soil.

They make their first appearance in May and the cold destroys them in September; in July they are most voracious and, fortunately for the traders, the journeys from the trading posts to the factories are generally concluded at that period.

The food of the mosquito is blood which it can extract by penetrating the hide of a buffalo; and if it is not disturbed it gorges itself so as to swell its body into a transparent globe.

The wound does not swell like that of the African mosquito, but it is infinitely more painful; and when multiplied a hundredfold and continued for so many successive days it becomes an evil of such magnitude that cold, famine, and every other concomitant of an inhospitable climate must yield the pre-eminence to it.

It chases the buffalo to the plains, irritating him to madness; and the reindeer to the seashore, from which they do not return till the scourge has ceased.
On the 6th the thermometer was 106 degrees in the sun and on the 7th 110 degrees.