1873 ] 93 



seen when the insect is alive. It is worth notice, that, although in other respects the 

 species is an Idiocerus, the lamella on the antennae of the ^ (which is one of the 

 chief characters of the genus) is wanting. — Id. : August 16tk, 1873. 



The Entomology of our novel writers. — We have before (vol. ix, p. 45) had oc- 

 casion to notice a lack of ordinary entomological knowledge in popular novelists. 

 In a tale ("Lady Bell") now being publislied in " Good Words," the following passage 

 occurs in the No. for Jidy. Time supposed to be the month of March : — " The day 

 " was so complete in its spring character, that at sundown a little cloud of midges 

 " seemed to start into life and hover in the air. ' How short their day is ! ' said Lady 

 " Bell, regi'etfuUy for the ephemera. ' I know they are only creatures of a day, but 

 " ' to come and go so soon, — if they had waited for a few more months, they might 

 " ' have danced thi-ough a few more hours, and not been j)inched by so sharp a death. 

 "' Who knows ?' " Our author is evidently a keen observer, and has been much 

 strack by the swarms of the winter gnat (Trichocera hiemalis), but has confused the 

 terms "midge" and "ephemera." The temperature of "a few more months" 

 would probably not be at all conducive to " a few more hours' " existence in this 

 insect. Wlio knows ? — Eds. 



lijuieius. 



On the Axcestrt of Insects, ' printed in advance ' from chap, xiii of ' Our 

 Common Insects,' by A. S. Packard, Jun. Salem, Naturalists' Agency, 1873. 



The question as to the origin of insects has of late occupied the attention of 

 many of our very best entomologists of tlie evolutionist school ; and, although much 

 I that has been written on the subject must be considered as purely speculative, all 

 i thinking naturalists must give the various writers credit for having discovered many 

 ' most remarkable facts, facts that are accepted as such even by the most conservative 

 I of anti-evolutionists. Among those writers, the most prominent are Darwin, Lubbock, 

 ! Fritz Miiller, Brauer, A. Dohrn, and the author of the pamphlet now under consider- 

 ation. Several authors (e. g., Lubbock and Brauer) consider the most primitive 

 type of Insecta now existing to be represented by the ciu'ious genus Campodea among 

 I the PoduridcB, and that from this type all forms have originated. Others, such as 

 ; F. Miiller and Dohrn, look to the Crustacea (in their Zoea or larval-form) as being 

 the stock out of which insects have been evolved. Our author goes a step farther, 

 and thinks that the ancestry of insects should be directly traced to the worms. 

 Without risking an opinion on the merits or demerits of any of these theories, we 

 cannot avoid asking whether the writers do not place too much stress upon external 

 I form, which in some cases may be more owing to special adaptation to modes of life 

 (or, from a Darwinian point of view, acquired in consequence of these habits), than 

 : as the results of an actual relationship ? Be that as it may, the researches of evolu- 

 1 tionists have proved the utter fallacy of the old metamorphotic classification of insects 

 into Metahola and Ametahola, for they show that the cases in which complete meta- 

 morphosis exists ai'e comparatively rare, and that in many so-called metabolic insects 

 the various changes up to the pupa state are as ill-defined as in those with metamor- 

 phosis acknowledged to be incomplete. More than this : — we now know as proved 



