GNAT, a name (Anglo Saxon, gncet) properly applied to the members of the Culicidoe (a family of the insect order Diplera, division Qrthorrhapha, subdivision Nematocera, section Eucephαlα), but sometimes also used for the Chiro- nomidoe. The Culicidoe consist of about 150 known species, of the genera Culex, Anopheles, Aedes, Psorophora, Corethra, <kc.; they are distributed over the chief divisions of the world, and, in spite of their very feeble build, reach as far north as man has penetrated (having been found during Nares’s recent Arctic expedition). As regards time, examples of a Culex and a Corethra have been discovered in the Tertiary beds of the Lower White River, Colorado. The Culicidoe are distinguished from their immediate allies, amongst other characters, by having the parts of the mouth produced into a slender porrected rostrum, nearly half the length of the insect, and composed of many distinct pieces· (seven, according to Westwood, who remarks that the mouth in these delicate creatures is formed of the same number of pieces, and on the same plan, as that of the robust Tabani), and ιnany-jυinted palpi, very long and pilose in the male, in which sex the antennae are plumose and 14- jointed. Tlιe fibrils of the antennae are considered by Mayer as auditory organs. The usual special representative of the family is Culex ρipieηs, the common gnat, whose blood-sucking propensities have rendered it too well known. It pierces the skin with the needle-like lancets of its rostrum, which are barbed at the tips, and gradually inserts the whole of those organs, at the same time liquefying the blood by some fluid secretion, which apparently adds to the subsequent irritation. The female, recognizable by her more simple antennae and palpi, alone attacks man, and, in ...

κώνωψ, Matt. xxiii, 24, a small-winged insect, comprehending a genus of the order of _diptera_. In those hot countries, as Servius remarks, speaking of the east, gnats and flies are very apt to fall into wine, if it be not carefully covered; and passing the liquor through a strainer, that no gnat or part of one might remain, became a proverb for exactness about little matters. This may help us to understand that passage, Matt. xxiii, 24, where the proverbial expression of carefully straining out a little fly from the liquor to be drunk, and yet swallowing a camel, intimates, that the scribes and Pharisees affected to scruple little things, and yet disregarded those of the greatest moment.