36 



CHAPTER III. 



SEXES AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS. 



The description of tlie general structure of Insects in 

 the last chapter is especially applicable to these 

 creatures in their mature state, when they are prin- 

 cipally engaged in the business of propagating their 

 species. To complete our knowledge of the general 

 phsenomena of Insect life, it will consequently be 

 necessary to investigate the process of development 

 by which this final condition is attained. 



In the first place we may assume it to be a general 

 law (which is not, however, without a few apparent 

 exceptions), that every individual insect with which 

 we meet is of one or other of two sexes, — either male 

 or female. The characteristic diff'erence between the 

 sexes, in Insects, as in all other animals, consists 

 principally in the nature of the generative organs. 

 It would of course be foreign to our present purpose 

 to describe these in detail, or to enter at any length 

 upon the interesting question of the formation and 

 impregnation of the eggs, and it will be sufficient to 

 state that the generative organs of the female consist 

 of numerous sacs or tubes, called ovaries^ in which 

 the eggs are developed, and those of the male of 

 glandular organs secreting the seminal fluid, by the 

 contact of which with the immature eggs, or rather 



