CHAPTER XXIV 



INSECTA, CONTINUED 



Vocabulary 



Vestiges, remnants or traces of organs. 



Metamorphosis, the series of changes in the life of an animal. 



Credible, believable. 



Communal life, life in colonies for mutual help. 



Gorged, filled with food. 



Bearing in mind the fact that all insects have, in general, the 

 same organs as those found in the grasshopper, we shall now briefly 

 study how they are developed in representatives of a few other 

 insect orders. 



LEPIDOPTERA 



The butterflies and moths belong to the order lepidoptera (scale 

 winged) and furnish a familiar type of quite a different group of 

 insects. 



Head. The antennae of butterflies are club shaped or knobbed 

 at the tip while those of moths are usually feather like. The com- 

 pound eyes are very large and rounded and the neck very flexible, 

 but it is in the mouth parts that they differ most from the or- 

 thoptera, these being adapted for sucking nectar from flowers. 

 The labrum and mandibles are reduced to mere vestiges while 

 the maxillae are enormously lengthened and locked together to 

 form the coiled proboscis or tongue which, when extended, may 

 equal in length all the rest of the body and is always long enough 

 to reach the nectar glands of the flowers they prefer. The labium 

 is reduced in size, two feathery palpi being all that is left of it in 

 most cases. Thus in this set of mouth parts, we have an example 



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