176 PHYSIOLOGY OF INSECTS. 



to any figures with which we may meet, and technical 

 nomenclature in this branch of the subject involves the 

 description in obscurity instead of elucidating it. 



Sculpture of Surface. — The characters impressed on the 

 surface of the skeleton are highly important, and afford us 

 excellent guides for the discrimination of species : a more 

 minute detail of these appears indispensible : the following 

 are the principal variations. 



Smooth, lavis or Icevigatus, is when the sui'face is per- 

 fectly smooth, without depressions or elevations : shining, 

 nitidus or lucidus, when the surface is polished as a mir- 

 ror : rough, asper or scaher, when covered with an irregular 

 rugosity : pustulose or ;:>M5^^fZ6>«^/5, when covered with 

 pustules resembling those occasioned by the small-pox : 

 muricated or muricatus is when these pustules are pointed, 

 and echinatus when they are produced into spines : 

 verrucose or verrucosus, when covered with tubercles 

 resembling warts : punctured or puncius is when the sur- 

 face has the appearance of having been thickly punctured 

 by the point of a pin, the pin not passing through, but 

 simply making impressions : punctured in lines or strio- 

 pimctus is when these punctures are arranged in longi- 

 tudinal lines : reticulate or reticulatus, when tolerably 

 smooth, yet covered with something like net-work : vermi- 

 culate or vermiculatus, when covered with tortuous mark- 

 ings, like worm-eaten wood : striate or striatus is when 

 marked with longitudinally impressed lines, and puncto- 

 striatus is when these lines are themselves punctured : 

 canaliculate or canaliculatus is when the impressed lines 

 are coarser and deeper than the foregoing, and sulcate or 

 sulcatus is when they are still deeper, resembling furrows : 

 lineate or lineatus has lines in the same degree as striatus, 

 but the lines, instead of being impressed, are raised above 

 the surface : keeled or carinatus is when these raised lines 



