104 



MR. A. MURRAY ON OETHOPTEROUS INSECTS. 



and in the midst of them a very comfortable, firm, plump, fat, true 

 apodal and acephalous larva (fig. 3). It was obviously a parasite. 



Fig. 3. 



In the same capsule were found a large number of Chalcidites, 

 some in chrysalis and some in the imago state. The apodous larva 

 probably belonged to them. Professor Owen may have met with 

 a similar parasite, and mistaken it for the real lord of the manor. 



This is on the supposition that I have rightly interpreted Pro- 

 fessor Owen's views. It may be that I have misunderstood him. 

 In speaking of the insect passing its larval stage in the egg, he 

 may have merely meant its embryonic stage. If this was what he 

 meant, then probably we are at one in our meaning ; for it has 

 never occurred to me to question that, in its embryonic existence 

 the Blaftci went through the usual course of development observed 

 in other animals in which it has been studied. I perfectly believe 

 (although I have myself never traced its progress) that, as in the 

 Aphis, whose development from the egg has been so clearly fol- 

 lowed out and described by Professor Huxley — and, for that matter^ 

 as in the Vertebrata and in our ovni species — the first semblance 

 of form which the germ of life assumes is a cord which may not 

 inaptly be compared to something vermiform, and this shapeless 

 shape or formless object gradually and imperceptibly assumes that 

 shape which it is to bear when it leaves the egg. Consequently the 

 long legs must at one time have been short ones, and still further 

 back must have shown their first indications as buds. 



This is embryonic development ; and if it is this which Professor 

 Owen means (and there are some passages in his work which now 

 lead me to think that it may be so), then I misunderstood his mean- 

 ing, and have been writing and thinking at cross purposes with him. 



But if that is his meaning, then I must dissent from the relation 

 which he appears to think exists between the development of these 

 insects in the egg and the metamorphoses of other insects out of 



