300 STATES OF INSECTS. (Imago.) 
of its body naked and membranous*. The species to 
which this illustrious Naturalist here alludes, does not 
appear to have been ascertained. The female of many 
gall-insects (Coccz) is so large in comparison with the 
male, that the latter traverses her back as an ample area 
for a walk. But this is nothing compared with the 
prodigious difference between the sexes of Termes fatalis, 
and other species of white ants, whose males are often 
many thousand times less than the females, when the 
latter are distended with eges*. Accidental differences 
in the size of the sexes sometimes arise: as when the 
female larva has, from any cause, been deprived of its 
proper supply of food, it will occasionally be less than 
the male. De Geer has stated a circumstance with re- 
spect to the Aphides that produce galls, that should be 
mentioned under this head—the first, or mother female, 
is larger than any of her progeny ever become ¢. 
The second observation that may be generally applied 
to the sexes of insects is, that, size excepted, there is a 
close resemblance between them in other respects. But 
to this rule the exceptions are very numerous, and so im- 
portant that it is necessary to specify examples of each 
under distinct heads. 
i. In some species the sexes are either partly or wholly 
of a different colour. ‘Thus in the order Coleoptera, the 
elytra of the male of Rhagium meridianum are testace- 
ous, and those of the female black. Leptura rubra of 
Linné, with red elytra, is the female of his Z. testacea, 
in which they are testaceous. Cantharis dermestoides of 
* Reaum. iv. 30. Pe Ibid..¢. iv. falas 
© See above, Vor. II. 36, 4 De Geer iii. 25. 
