Strepsiptera or Stylopide.| ABNORMAL COLEOPTERA, 453 
ABNORMAL COLEOPTERA. 
STREPSIPTERA or STYLOPIDE. 
Although the Strepsiptera are now usually regarded as belonging to 
the order Coleoptera, it must be allowed that the question cannot be 
considered as settled, and Professor Westwood is still of opinion that 
they ought to be regarded as a distinct order; in a communication I 
received from him on March 17th, 1889, he says, ‘* My idea is that the 
Morphology of the different states and the leading organisms warrant 
the adoption of Mr, Kirby’s rules for the establishment of it as a new 
order of insects” ; in the second edition of Professor Rolleston’s Forms 
of Animal Life, p. 511, Mr. W. Hackett Jackson, the editor, after men- 
tioning that the Strepsiptera are included by Brauer and others among 
the Coleoptera, and after alluding to the fact that Professor Westwood 
is still of opinion that they should be retained as a separate order, con- 
tinues as follows: “ They are ento-parasitic on various Bees and Wasps. 
The male is free, has small twisted fore-wings, longitudinally folded hind 
wings, and a large metathorax. It is metagnathous (that is, it has the 
mouth adapted for sucking in the imago and for biting in the larva), 
The mandibles are reduced, the maxille connate with the labrum, their 
palpi two-jointed. The female is blind, vermiform, and never quits the 
host. There is a dorsal canal by which the male effects impregnation. 
The ova develop in the celome (or body cavities); the Campodeiform. 
larvee escape by the dorsal canal. They are carried by a bee or wasp to 
its nest, where they bore into a grub, and are transformed into apod 
vermiform larve. The male pupa is coarctate, and perforates one of the 
abdominal intersegmental membranes of the Bee pupa, protruding only 
the head, as does also the female.” The Strepsiptera are peculiar as 
being among the few insects that are viviparous and produce living 
larvee, the only other instances being the Tachine, and some Oestride 
among the Diptera, and some Staphylinide among the true Coleoptera ; 
they are also said, by Von Siebold, to afford an instance of Pdogenesis, 
or the production of ova by the immature animal, the ova being pro- 
duced in the pupa at a very early period, and these being laid just be- 
fore, or as soon as the insects become free ; this, of course, is also an 
instance of Parthenogenesis, or the production of young without the 
intervention of the male, of which the chief examples are found among 
insects in the Queen Bees, Humble Bees, Wasps and Aphides. 
Dr. Leconte and Dr, Horn place the Stylopide at the end of the 
Heteromera between the Rhipiphoridew and the Rhinomaceride, which 
they regard as the first of the families of the Rhynchophora ; if, how- 
ever, they are to be regarded as Coleoptera at all,it is much the best 
plan to place them at the end of the order as abnormal members, 
although their habits and the fact that the larve in their first state are 
