386 TRANSFORMATTOyS OF IN'SECTS. 



of the eggs within. These jiggers produce deep ulcerations, which 

 give a great deal of trouble before they can be healed. 



Packard considers the flea in the light of a wingless fly, and 

 agrees with Baron Osten Sacken, that it is a degraded genus of 

 the family to which belong some small MycetopJiilcB, that live in 

 mushrooms and toadstools during their larval condition. The 

 metamorphoses of the flea agree closely with those of these small 

 insects. He states : " In its adult condition the flea combines 

 the characters of the Diptcra with certain features of the grass- 

 hoppers and cockroaches and the bugs {Hemiptera)." No wonder, 

 then, that this aggregation of unpleasant characteristics is fierce, 

 bloodthirsty, and agile. The same author states that " there are 

 minute wing-pads instead of wings present in some species." 



The Strcpsiptcra are very singular insects, being remarkable 

 from their peculiar method of life and the nature of their growth. 

 Towards the end of the last century Professor Rossi, of Pisa, 

 discovered a species which was parasitic on wasps, and he thought 

 that it belonged to the Ichnenmotis, and lately Dr. Peck, an 

 American naturalist, has discovered another species [Xenos Peckii), 

 which lives in the body of wasps, like the most interesting insect 

 we are about to notice. Kirby discovered an insect many years 

 since which had most extraordinary structural characteristics and 

 habits, and he described it as the type of the Strepsiptera. These 

 insects have the front wings rudimentary, and only existing in 

 the shape of long and narrow offshoots or balancers ; but the 

 posterior wings, on the contrary, are very much developed, and 

 are membranous, being capable of folding up like a fan. The 

 eyes are globular and prominent, the antennae are short, and the 

 structures of the mouth are free. It soon became evident that 

 only the males of the insect were known. 



Siebold, in 1843, having obtained some eggs, was able to 

 observe the larvae, and he soon discovered that the females of 

 Siylops, one of the Strepsiptera, were blind, had no legs, and always 

 retained the appearance of larvae, and that they never quitted 

 the bodies of those insects in which they pass a parasitic exist- 

 ence. George Newport paid great attention to the history of 

 these curious insects, and when he wrote his article " Insecta " 

 in the Cyclopczdia of Anatomy and Physiology, four distinct genera 



