fi SYNOPSIS OF PHASMIDjE. 



The head is sometimes quadrate, flat, or convex, or occasionally 

 much gibbose ; sometimes short and pyramidical, horned, or 

 spined. 



The mandibles are large, thick, somewhat rounded, with an 

 acute, dentate, black margin, somewhat in the shape of a horse- 

 shoe. 



The palpi are unequal, depressed, and hairy. The maxillary 

 jialpi are rive-jointed, with the two basal joints the smallest; the 

 third and fourth rather longer, and nearly equal ; and the fifth 

 rather longer, broad, obliquely truncate in some, and in others sub- 

 ovate and acute. The labial palpi are three-jointed, with the first 

 joint very small, and the second and last nearly equal ; they are 

 always similar in form to the former. 



The maxilla is membranaceous, with the apex corneous, triden- 

 tate, and black. 



The labium is transverse, bilobed, and membranaceous. 



The thorax is subject to great variation of form : in some it is 

 long and cylindrical ; in others short, flat, and quadrate. Its length 

 also varies considerably ; for in the Pterophasmata it is always 

 shorter than the abdomen, while in the Apterophasmata it is in some 

 species as long as, or even longer than that organ, and very distinctly 

 divided into three segments. Of these, the first, or prothorax, is 

 generally shorter, but in one species it is longer than the meso- 

 thorax : it is generally subquadrate, sometimes armed with acute 

 spines, and mostly convex above and flat beneath. The second, or 

 mesothorax, is in most cases long and cylindrical, but in some as 

 short as, or even shorter than the metathorax, and subquadrate ; it 

 is also sometimes armed with spines, which, according to Lichten- 

 stein, furnish a sexual difference, the male being more strongly 

 spined than the female : in some cases this remark applies, but I 

 am not inclined to consider it as a good substantial rule. The third, 

 or metathorax, is not, in the Pterophasmata, easily distinguished, 

 being generally short and quadrate, and partly hidden by the wings ; 

 but it is always broader than the others : in the Apterophasmata, on 

 the contrary, it is generally as long as the former segments, although 

 sometimes it is rather shorter. 



The wing-coverts, or tegmina, are membranaceous and opake ; 

 they vary much in length, and are rather shorter in the male than 

 in the female. In the former sex, they are sometimes armed in the 

 centre with an elevated ridge, and sometimes with a blunt or acute 

 spine, while the females have the tegmina rather broad, longer and 

 rounder at the tip, without armature in their centre. In the sub- 

 sectional characters ; they mention them at the head of each genus of the winged 

 division, and have formed two great sections, viz. those with distinct, and those 

 with indistinct stemmata. They are far, however, from supplying tangible cha- 

 racters ; for even the restricted genus Phasma, which is placed in the first section, 

 contains species with, and others without these organs ; I have therefore not 

 noticed them in my short descriptions. 



