276 THE MICROSCOPICAL NEWS. 
THE CRANE FLY (T7ipula Oleracea). 
From Co .e’s STUDIES. 
l[\HE common Crane Fly or Daddy Long Legs, or as it is called 
in some parts of the country, Harry or Peter Long Legs, is a 
very well-known British insect. Its larva or grub indeed enjoys 
quite an unenviable notoriety, for the reason that the little brown, 
legless and wormlike creature no sooner emerges from the egg 
among the roots of a grass crop, or garden lawn, where it has been 
deposited by a careful parent, than it applies itself with an energy 
undisturbed by other cares to the one absorbing object of ts life 
at this period. Its destiny is to eat, and eat it most assuredly 
does, with a degree of perseverance worthy of a better cause. So 
great is its voracity that the roots of the grasses, and other plants 
where Tipula-larvee abound, are so completely eaten away by them 
that it has been found possible, over large areas, to roll up the 
withered turf as easily as if a turf cutter had been under it. 
Naturally, under these circumstances, the grub increases in size, 
and after a few months it passes into the quiescent state of a pupa, 
and then eats no more, but undergoes a series of metamorphoses, 
resulting in the development of wings, antennz, or feelers, legs, 
and other organs, external and internal, and there emerges from 
the ground some fine autumn evening the perfect dipterous 
(Gr. dis, twice; pteron, wing) insect which is the subject of the 
present study. 
In considering the anatomy of the crane fly, the first point to 
strike the observer is the division of its body into three distinct 
regions—head, thorax or chest, and abdomen. ‘The abdomen is 
easily seen to be made up of a series of annular segments, and a 
study of its development, and of its relation to allied animals, 
shows that the thorax and head are constructed on the same type, 
though in consequence of developmental changes bringing about 
the fusion of originally separate parts and the suppression of others, 
it is very difficult to make this out in the head. 
The abdomen is devoid of appendages, except in the female, an 
organ (ovipositor) for the deposition of its eggs; but each of the 
three segments of the thorax bears a pair of enormously long legs. 
The middle segment of the thorax also carries a pair of mem- 
braneous wings, and the third segment a pair of filamentous bodies 
with knobbed extremities (halteres or balancers) of very doubtful 
utility ; and believed by some to be the abortive representatives of 
the second pair of wings possessed by most insects. ‘The append- 
ages of the head must be left for more detailed consideration 
presently. The integument of the body and appendages is com- 
