Chapter VI 

 THE PEDIGREE OF INSECTS 



It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank . . . with various 

 insects flitting about . . . and to reflect that these elaborately 

 constructed forms . . . have all been produced by laws acting 

 around us. . . . There is grandeur in this view of life with its 

 several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator 

 into a few forms or into one ; and that . . . from so simple a 

 beginning, endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have 

 been and are being evolved. — Darwin. 



Relationships of the Insect-Orders. — The facts 

 set forth in the preceding chapters about the form, 

 life-histories, classification and habits of insects, give 

 but the outline of a vast subject. It remains to 

 review briefly this outline that has been sketched, 

 and to seek for the meaning of the facts before us. 

 In so far as we interpret them correctly we shall 

 catch glimpses of the path by which the insect-races 

 have come to be as they are to-day ; we shall, in a 

 measure at least, be enabled to trace their pedigree. 



In the first place it is necessary to gain some idea 

 as to the relationships between the various orders of 

 insects. Which of them represent high and which 

 lowly twigs on their branch of the great tree of 

 life ? Do any of the living insects of to-day retain 

 unchanged the characters of remote ancestors ? that 

 is to say, can any existing group of insects be 

 regarded as truly primitive ? In answering such 

 questions as these, two principles are admitted by 

 well-nigh all students of animal life. Animals 



