THE INSECTS 2973 



The most noticeable of these is Fig. 1 1 , representing a large and handsome butter- 

 fly, which, when at rest, with its wings folded back, exactly resembles a dead leaf, 

 even to the midrib and stem; while Figs. 23 and 24 exhibit two small moths, which 

 might be readily mistaken for bird dung. In the Orthoptera, as the insects allied 

 to the cockroaches and grasshoppers are called, the phenomenon is carried to an 

 extent elsewhere unsurpassed in the animal kingdom. This is well shown in the 

 case of the leaf insect (Fig. 4), the stick insect (Fig. 8), and the leaf -like locust 

 (Fig. 10). Most of the other figures on the plate are of less importance. Attention, 

 however, may be drawn to the water bug (Fig. 16), the young dragon fly (Fig 6), 

 the beetle (Fig. 19), the curious bugs (Fig. 20), which in attitude and color closely 

 approximate to the stems or bark to which they cling. Figs. 25 and 26 show 

 two beetles resembling sheep's droppings. Fig. 17 exhibits one of the May flies like 

 a dead leaf, and Fig. 21 two plant bugs which secrete threads of white wax and 

 appear as tufts of woolen matter. 



The general characteristics of the Hymenoptera will be more or less 

 ns ics f am jij ar O mos t readers from their acquaintance with the well-known 

 menoptera mem bers of the wasp, bee, and ant tribes. The scientific name by 

 which the order is known is derived from the fact that the upper and 

 under wings on either side are linked to each other by a series of minute hooks on 

 the one which cling to a fold in the membrane of the adjacent margin of the other. 

 The group includes the sawflies, wood borers, gall and parasitic wasps, ichneumons, 

 ants, spider-killing wasps, solitary and social wasps, and solitary and social bees. 

 The number of species known is from 30,000 to 40,000, though from our knowledge 

 of the proportion which they bear to other orders, it is computed that there may be 

 upward of 150,000 species yet to be discovered. In specialization of structure they 

 undoubtedly rank among the most highly developed of the Insecta. The neat, 

 agile frame, hard shining integuments, stout mandibles, strong, light wings, and 

 movable abdomen, bearing, in the case of the female, at its apex an ovipositor of 

 great power and precision of application, or modified into an instrument for sawing 

 and boring in some species, and in several families becoming a sting. All these 

 features combine with a temperament of extreme nervous energy to give them a 

 character for general intelligence, and a power of adapting means to ends such as 

 are manifested in no other allied order. The web-making spiders alone resemble 

 them in this respect, and we are able to find few analogies nearer than the intelligent 

 action, individual or concerted, of man himself. The social Hymenoptera, such as 

 ants, bees, and wasps have solved, on their own life plane, industrial difficulties and 

 social problems, pressing for solution in the various societies of men. Doubtless 

 this has been accomplished to a certain extent only at the cost of a loss of individu- 

 ality such as civilized man would not tolerate for a moment. When we find that 

 the worker ants, bees, and wasps have, during their specialization as workers pure 

 and simple, lost their sexual faculties, that the members of a species of Amazon ant 

 during their specialization as warriors have lost the power of even feeding them- 

 selves, being entirely dependent on slaves for their food, we may well pause before 

 concluding that such solutions of important problems are in the end for the best, at 

 any rate so far as concerns the human race. 



