18 



MORE MINOR HORRORS 



thorax, and through this sht the insect slowly 

 emerges. With much labour and difficulty 

 it squeezes its body through and pulls one 

 limb after another from its old integument, 



until at last even the long 

 whip-like antennae are 

 completely withdrawn. 

 Certain portions of its 

 inner anatomy — such as 

 the lining of parts of the 

 breathing-tubes, or trach- 

 eae — are also withdrawn. 

 Should the discarded skin 

 not be eaten by the emer- 

 gent insect, it remains on 

 the floor, and might easily 

 be mistaken for a sedentary 

 cockroach but for the fact 

 that live cockroaches never 

 are sedentary. 



The incomplete meta- 

 morphosis, the generalised 

 character of the nervures of the hind wings, 

 the complete separation of the three thoracic 

 segments (or rather their want of that 

 fusion so conspicuous in the higher insects 

 — ^the flies and the bees) and the undifferen- 

 tiated condition of the mouth parts — all 

 point to the insect being of a primitive type. 

 But there is no doubt that, whether a primi- 



FiG. 6. — Cast skin of 

 older nymph (pupa), x 2i. 

 (From Miall and Denny.) 



