ENTOMOLOGY. 375 



In a very few cases insects are partly developed before birth, 

 otherwise, after hatching from the egg, or being produced 

 alive (in the same first stage of development) by the female, 

 insects pass their lives in three different conditions or stages 

 successively. 



The first is that in which they are known as maggots, grubs, 

 or caterpilllars ; in the case of Grasshoppers, Cockroaches 

 and some other insects, ichere the young are very much the 

 same shape as the ixirent, only ivithout wings, they usually 

 go by the parent's name ; the young of Green Fly are some- 

 times known as "lice." In this state they are active, 

 voracious, and increase in size ; and in this first stage all 

 insects are scientifically termed larrce. 



In the second stage some Orders of insects are usually in- 

 active and cannot feed, as is the case with the chrysalis of 

 the Butterfly, or the mummy-like form of the Beetle or Wasp 

 with its limbs in distinct sheaths folded down beneath it ; 

 some, however, are active and feed, as Grasshoppers, Cock- 

 roaches, Aphides (or Green Fly) and others, and resemble the 

 parent insect, excepting that their wings and, for the most 

 part, their wing-cases are not as yet fully formed ; and in this 

 second stage all insects are scientifically termed inqm. 



The third state is that of the perfect insect, in _ which 

 (whether male or female, or of whatever different kind, as 

 Moth, Beetle, Cricket, Aphis, &c.) it is scientifically termed 

 an imago. 



The term Larva is from the Latin, meaning a mask or ghost, 

 and signifies that the insect in this stage gives a mere vague 

 idea of its perfect form. 



Pupa signifies an infant, and is fairly appropriate to the 

 second stage in which the insect is forming into the perfect 

 state, but is not fully developed either in its limbs or 

 functions. 



Imago signifies the image, the likeness, or an example of 

 the perfect insect. The appropriateness of the scientific 

 names for the first and third stage does not seem very clear, 

 but there is no doubt of the convenience of having some one 

 tcrm^ by which each different stage of life of any insect may be 

 described ; and these are the words that have been adopted ; 

 in the following pages some detail is given of these three 

 successive stages of development. 



Larva (Maggot, Grub, Caterpillar, &c.). — If an insect-egg 

 about to hatch is held against the light, or examined as a 

 transparent object by means of a strong magnifier, it will be 

 seen that there is a speck inside which increases in size and 

 becomes more regular in shape daily, until it is too large for 

 the egg to contain, when it breaks through this thin film 



