100 



dorn, 'For the elements were changed by a kind 

 of harmony; earthly things were tnrned into 

 watery and things that before swam in the water 

 went on dry ground', neither did it escape the 

 notice of the Rev. William Kirby that it is said 

 in the Authorised version of Genesis , 'Let the 

 waters bring forth abundantly the creeping crea- 

 ture that hath life and let the fowl fly above 

 the earth', implying a conviction more definitely 

 enunciated by the translators , that the fowls 

 came out of the water , whence arose a rjuaint 

 notion of barnacles being changed into geese. 



According to Fritz Müller water-inhabiting 

 and water-breathing Crustacea were the original 

 stem from which the generations of myriapods, 

 scorpions , shepherd spiders , spiders and insects, 

 branched off in succession ; and if this were so. 

 those prototypes of the King Crabs the woodlouse- 

 like Trilobites , the Perichthys , Pterygotus and 

 Stylonuri, with faceted eyes, céphalothorax, ringed 

 hind-bodies and ovipositors; that crawled or swam 

 over the surface of our planet in the Silurian 

 and Devonian days, have the appearance of being 

 the effigies of knights errant whence the orders 

 of insects are descended : one small Trilobite found 

 in shoals in the flags of Forfarshire has been 

 named Kampecaris from its resemblance to a 

 caterpillar , insects of all oi'ders revert to the 

 water as their nursery, and the caterpillar when 

 it becomes cataleptic and changes into a chrysalis, 

 in which we may perhaps see the result of winter 

 frosts , resumes the appearance of a Trilobite. 

 Insects moreover acquire their organs progressive^ 

 as the shrimp - like zoea undergoes its meta- 

 morphosis into crab or as a lobster reproduces 

 its claw ; and when the air veins, that were once 

 branchiae such as the larvae of May Flies wave 

 at their spiracles, inflate when the insect emerges 

 into wings , we seem to contemplate their past 

 history : and when we see the Fairy Ants Poly- 

 nenia natans found in pond water in Staffordshire 

 and near London like diving birds employing them 

 to swim we seem to behold their earliest ;ise. 



Turning 



our attention to dry ground, the grass- 



hoppers that expand their wings as aerial planes 

 have the appearance of learning to fly, and some 

 of the same sort indeed seem more skiliul than 

 the others , for the Locusta virldissima that in 

 England confines its attention to the potato plot 

 and hedgerow elm I have seen in a Swiss valley 

 at Göschenen flying high overhead. That grass- 

 hoppers had an aijuatic ancestry is suggested by 

 the species that inhabit the marshland, one little 

 Tettix I found nimbly leaping about on the sur- 

 face of the water in a pond at Jafla. 



Certainlj' the faculty of swimming is given to 

 some exotic Orthoptera of the genera Xya and 

 Tettix , Captain Boys has described a species of 

 the latter found abundantly near the waterfalls 

 at Mhow and Malwa which frequenting the sedges 



on the banks will dive and swim rapidly with 

 strokes of the foliaceous appendages on its hind 

 legs , and in 1886 Mr. Eland Shaw exhibited at 

 the February meeting of the London Entomo- 

 logical Society specimens of the aquatic Tettix 

 australis from the Ne|3ean River. 



It was the similarity of form , parts and or- 

 ganization that induced Linnaeus and Charles de 

 Geer to classify the crabs and lobsters with the 

 insects which according to 51. Odier have ex- 

 changed their heavy submarine carapace of car- 

 bonate of lime for a light subaerial armour of 

 the phosphates ; and yet some are remarkably 

 hard , horny and boat-shaped , adapted to a life 

 in fresh or brackish water and even as the water 

 bug, Halobates Streatfleldiana, exploring the 

 surface of the Indian Ocean. The idea of the 

 crustacean to employ its jointed limbs to bring 

 food to its mouth finds substantiation in the 

 raptorial legs with which the Squilla mantis and 

 desmaresti go groping among the rocks and sea- 

 weeds of Cornwall and the Channel Islands in 

 search of their prey, and these sugar-tong seizers 

 we see reproduced in the species of Mantis, Water 

 Scorpion and Snake Fly, that cement the hetero- 

 metabolic orders of Orthoptera , Hemiptera and 

 Neuroptera ; while long-antennaed and prickly 

 l)eetles, jn'ickly criclîets and grasshoppers, pinching 

 stag-lieetles and knotty bugs , such as the Rev. 

 J. G. Wood has depicted in his Insects Abroad, 

 are wont to recall in a- day dream ancestral 

 crabs and lobsters ; the Water Boatmen that 

 skim the dimpling pool seem at times a reminis- 

 cence of the Perichthj^s and scorpion-like Ptery- 

 gotus, and the plant beetles that glitter like gems 

 on the herbage present a provokingly Truobite 

 appearance. So in their generation the shepherd 

 spiders that crawl on the garden gate retain the 

 form and ruthless nature of spider crabs and 

 scorpions that of the lobster ; they are of lineage 

 old for scorpions are found in the coal measures 

 and a cast of Eophrymis Prestyicii preserved 

 in a Dudley clay-nodule which was given me 

 by Dr. Henry Woodward , I often think the 

 memento of a gigantic, ancestral, shepherd spider. 

 An ancient homogeneity of the insect orders 

 appears also to be extant in connecting links, 

 the a(iuatic larvae of the dragon-flies and water 

 beetles have a similar configuration and it is 

 strange to see weevil beetles bestück with butter- 

 scales ; the clear- winged Sphinx Bloths resemble 

 the hook-winged saw-flies in appearance and meta- 

 morphosis , hover-flies are garbed like bees and 

 their oar shaped haltères seem to say that formerly 

 like them they were proud of four wings. 



Mr. Mc. Lachlan and Mr. Dunning once upon 

 a time disputed whether Acentropus iiireus was 

 to be considered a member of the Neuroptera or 

 Lepidoptera and the difference between the caddis 

 flies and Tineina is infinitesimal. I recall January 



