264 



ORTHOPTERA 



CHAP. 



small size until after the third moult, when they suddenly shot out 

 to their full size ; they came out of little eases about a quarter of 



an inch long, and in the course of a 

 few minutes attained their full size 

 of about two and a half inches of 

 length. In the apterous species the 

 difference between the young and 

 adults in external characters is very 

 slight. 



Phasmidae are very sensitive to 

 cold ; both in North America and 

 Australia their lives are terminated 

 by the occurrence of frost. They 

 are all vegetable feeders, the canni- 

 balism that has been attributed to 

 them by several writers being prob- 

 ably imaginary. They are, how- 

 ever, excessively voracious, so that a 

 pair will destroy a great quantity 

 of foliage ; they are consequently 

 in some parts of the world classed 

 amongst injurious Insects. In Fiji 

 and the Friendly Islands, Lo'pa'plius 

 cocophagus eats the cocoa-nut foliage 

 and causes a scarcity of food, so that 

 it becomes a matter of necessity to destroy these Insects, One 

 writer has gone so far as to attribute the occurrence of cannibal 

 habits amongst the inhabitants of some of these islands to the want 

 of food caused by the ravages of this Insect. Some, if not all, of 

 the Phasmidae have the habit of ejecting a stinking fluid, that is 

 said to be very acrid, and occasionally, when it strikes the eye, to 

 cause blindness ; this liquid comes from glands placed in the 

 thorax. Some Phasmidae are much relished as food by birds ; 

 Diapheromera femorata is sucked by several bugs as well as eaten 

 by birds, and another species is recorded to have harboured 

 Ichneumon-flies in its body without suffering any apparent incon- 

 venience from their presence or from their emergence. Not- 

 withstanding the great amount of food they consume and their 

 want of activity, they produce comparatively few eggs. From 

 twelve to twenty or thirty is frequently mentioned as about the 



Fig. 151. Ceroys saevissima 

 (After Westwood. ) 



Brazil. 



