STHEPSIPTERA. 407 



are nearly 2000, have been described by Mr. Stephens in his 

 Illustrations of British Entomology, and by the late lamented 

 A. H. Haworth, in his rare Lepidoptera Britannica. 



ORDER x. STREPSIPTERA (Kirby; Rhipiptera, Latreille ; 

 Rhipidoptera, Lamarck). 



This order has been established for the reception of a 

 few insects of the most singular form and remarkable habits. 

 The name of the order is derived from the Greek, and is in 

 allusion to curious appendages of small size, which at first 

 were regarded as attached to the fore-legs; and consequently, 

 as these legs are prothoracic, and true fore-wings are meso- 

 thoracic, it was considered by Latreille that the former could 

 not be analogous to wings, and accordingly that Mr. Kirb/s 

 name of the order was inappropriate ; in lieu of which the 

 name Rhipiptera was proposed, in allusion to the fan-like 

 form of the real wings, which are very large, in shape like 

 the quadrant of a circle, and furnished with a few longi- 

 tudinal nerves, arranged like the ribs of a fan. Subsequent 

 discoveries have, however, proved that the small twisted 

 organs are in reality mesothoracic, and consequently as truly 

 representations of the fore-wings of butterflies, &c., as the 

 elytra of beetles, in some of which latter (Atractocerus, 

 Sitaris, &c.) these organs are nearly as much reduced in 

 size as the pseudelytra of the Strepsiptera. The head of 

 these insects is transverse, with large exposed eyes placed 

 on footstalks, divided into a small number of facets; the 

 mouth is of a singular character, there being scarcely any 

 appearance of aperture; there are also two slender and 

 pointed organs inserted widely apart, but crossing each 

 other, and a pair of large two-jointed palpi ; the antennae 

 are very extraordinary in their forms, being generally fur- 

 nished with an internal branch nearly as long as the antenna 



