230 ANCESTR Y AND CLA SSIFICA TION. 



meaning than that the ancestors of butterflies had 

 spiracles on these segments, as grasshoppers do 

 to-day. Moreover this original condition is less 

 aborted in the caterpillar than in the butterfly, 

 for false spiracles sometimes do occur in the larvae 

 of the lower Lepidoptera as well as slender tubes 

 connecting them with the tracheal tufts ; and this 

 is exactly what we should expect, since the abor- 

 tion of these parts is evidently connected with 

 greater adaptability of the wings to their purpose ; 

 in fact they are aborted in the caterpillar only to 

 prepare for a more completely rudimentary con- 

 dition in the perfect butterfly. 



There is another feature in the early stages of 

 a butterfly' s life which still more strikingly re- 

 calls the primitive condition of its metamor- 

 phoses. One important difference between the 

 lives of grasshoppers and butterflies is that the 

 pupal stage of the former is active, while that of 

 the latter is quiescent. In a previous chapter at- 

 tention was called to the ocellar riband of the but- 

 terfly chrysalis [see Fig. 53], an organ which bore 

 no special relation to the parts beneath, was par- 

 tially covered by the folded antennae, and which 

 possessed no significance whatever unless it had 

 once been useful, presuming in its possessor an 

 active life. Examine the eye of a grasshopper 

 just from the egg and one will find its surface 

 closely studded with low rounded prominences, 



