DEVELOPMENT OF OBTHOPTEROUS INSECTS. 101 



but still she may be found and studied everywhere. I first learned 

 to appreciate the true nature and relations of the nominally various 

 and distinct metamorphoses of insects, by watching and pondering 

 over the development of a Cockroach, which quits the egg as a 

 Crustacean. I saw that it passed through stages answering to those 

 at which other insects were arrested : there was a period when its 

 jointed legs were simple, short, unarticulated buds, when its thirteen 

 segments were distinct and equal — when it was apodal, when it was 

 acephalous." Predisposed by this, I viewed a specimen of the egg 

 of the Blatta, which shortly afterwards came into my hands, in a 

 diiferent light from what I should perhaps otherwise have done. 



I received from my correspondents in Old Calabar a rude idol- 

 like figure, in the corners of the eyes and behind the ears of which 

 three or four Cockroaches' eggs had been laid. The eggs of this 

 insect are compound eggs, formed somewhat like a broad pea-pod, 

 in which spaces are partitioned oflT transversely for the young 

 insects, which are arranged like peas in the pod. When the insect 

 had laid them on tliis figure, it had plastered them all over with a 

 cemented coating of chopped wood or straw, like a cocoon ; and 

 after this had been done, the whole figure had been rudely painted 

 by the natives, and these cases were covered with the paint. No 

 insect could have emerged without breaking through the case and 

 the paint, which were both uninjured. I presume, at a certain 

 stage on their passage homewards, the cold had killed them ; for I 

 found the contents preserved as they no doubt existed at the time 

 when this event took place. 



In one I found the mummied re- -^^S- !• 



mains of what, in describing them, I 

 called a row of unmistakeable grubs, 

 packed closely, filling these partitions. 

 Fig, 1 is a sketch of this ; and from 

 it it may be judged whether my de- 

 scription was not fairly warranted. 



The next egg which I opened showed no grubs. It was un- 

 doubtedly further advanced. In it I found only two insects, but 

 they had no longer the grub form ; they were smaU, wingless Blatta. 

 One was perfect and fresh, the other somewhat injured ; they were 

 probably the last survivors of their brothers and sisters, whom they 

 had no doubt devoured ; for the egg, although ready to open, had 

 never given egress to any of its inmates. One of these has been 

 lost ; but the other may be seen in the egg, as I found it. 



From these materials, and from those drawn from the Leaf-insect, 

 I fancied that I had demonstrated — 



