Nightmare Insects. 



53 



with a moveable flap, wiiieh the caterpillar can close 

 with its mandibles and fore-legs when danger threatens, 

 and thus closed it hangs suspended by a few threads. 

 When the caterpillar is about to become a chrysalis the 

 case is attached to the tree by a number of strong threads 

 from the front end. The brown chrysalis is furnished 

 with a ring of spines on each segment, which enable it to 

 move about its case. The male moth has black wings 

 with a purplish sheen ; but the wingless female remains 

 much like a chrysalis in appearance : mouth-parts and 

 antennae are absent, and the short rudimentary legs have 

 no claws. The body is pale brown with a fringe of woolly 

 hairs at each extremity. 



Nightmare Insects. 



There are no Insects that bear this name ; but there 

 is a famih',! which at present bears no English name, to 

 which the term might be applied with some degree of 

 fitness. Geoffroy gave them the name of little devils in 

 French, but that name has not been adopted by others. 

 They belong to the great order of bugs ; and the latter 

 word originalh' indicated a spectre or some monstrous 

 and terrifying object. The nightmare Insects, as we 

 have chosen to call them, are certainly among the most 

 eccentric forms of Insect life. Their grotesqueness is 

 due to an astounding and varying development of the 

 front part of the fore-body. They are all small Insects — 

 some of them very minute— and only one species ^ occurs 

 in Britain, whilst the continent of Europe can boast 

 only a few species. The headquarters of the family 

 is in North and South America. Their nearest allies 

 among Insects that are known generally are the 

 frog-hoppers^ and green-fly.* If we were to strip off 

 the remarkable addenda to the fore-body, we should 

 have left a form not differing very widely from that 

 of the green-fly, though with a broader head, set 

 under the projecting fore-bodv, and with two simple eyes 

 on the face. 



As Uhler has remarked of them, " They are of every 

 conceivable form, arched, compressed, depressed, hump- 

 backed, spindle-shaped, jwinted at both ends, inflated, 

 hemispherical, conical, and so forth, and are furnished 

 with an equal varii't\- ot superticial attachments. Tlu' 

 antenna? are short, bristk^-shaped, thick at the base, 

 and situated either below or a little in advance of the 



^ Mcinbracid;r. - Ccntrotiis cornutus. ^ Aphrophora 



^■^>ai> 



The House-Builder. 



.A large example of this group of small 

 moths. It is a native of Central America 

 and the West Indies, and is shown here of 

 the natural size. The mass of web at the 

 lower end shows how the case was sus- 

 pended before the caterpillar changed to 

 a chrysalis. The female is wingless and 

 quite unlike a moth ; she never leaves 

 the case. The moth above is the male. 



* Aphis. 



