iiTH May. 



ORDINARY MEETING. —MR. H. GOSS "ON THE 

 GENERATION OF INSECTS, ESPECIALLY PAR- 

 THENOGENESIS, WITH OBSERVATIONS ON HER- 

 MAPHRODITISM." 



Before proceeding to the main subject of the paper, it would be 

 necessary to make a few prehminary observations on the nature of 

 insects, the place which had been assigned to them by naturalists in 

 their classification of the animal kingdom, and the orders into which 

 they had been divided. 



Insects were animals having articulated bodies divided into three 

 chief portions, namely, the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. They 

 had three pairs of legs and generally two pairs of wings, and in their 

 perfect state two eyes and two antennae, and they passed through 

 several transformations, called their metamorphoses before attaining 

 the perfect or highest state of their existence. 



The transformations through which insects passed during the 

 cycle of their existence were four, namely, the egg, the larva, the pupa, 

 and the imago or perfect state. These transformations or periods of 

 existence differed widely from one another in the various orders of 

 insects. In some orders — for instance, in the Lepidoptera — these 

 periods of existence in the life of the insect were very distinct, and 

 during no one of them did the insect bear any external resemblance to 

 that which it possessed in another. Sir John Lubbock observed, when 

 writing on the subject of metamorphoses, that " some insects acquire 

 their full bulk in a form very different from that which they ultimately 

 assume, and pass through a period of inaction in which not only is the 

 whole form of the body altered, not only are legs and wings acquired, 

 but even the internal organs themselves are almost entirely disintegrated 

 and reformed." On the other hand, in some orders — such as the 

 Orthoptera — there was not so marked a distinction between the larval, 

 pupal, and perfect states, the changes consisting of a gradual increase 

 of size and in the acquisition of wings. 



In order to explain the position occupied by insects in the animal 



