CHAPTER XI 



THE NERVE -WINGED INSECTS 



(Order Neuroptera) SCORPION-FLIES 

 (Order Mecoptera), AND CADDIS- 

 FLIES (Order Trichoptera). 



INNyEUS, the first great classifier of animals and 

 plants, found in the character of the wings a 

 simple basis for grouping insects into orders. 

 For the wingless insects he established the order 

 Aptera;* the two- winged ones he called Diptera; 

 the moths and butterflies, with scale-covered 

 wings, he called Lepidoptera; the beetles with their horny sheath-like fore 

 wings he termed Coleoptera; the thin- and membranous- winged ants, bees, 

 wasps, and ichneumon-flies he named Hymenoptera; to the roaches, crickets, 

 locusts, and katydids, with their parchment-like straight-margined fore wings, 

 he gave the name Orthoptera; the sucking-bugs with their fore wings 

 having the basal half thickened and veinless, the apical half membranous 

 and veined, he called Hemiptera; and finally he grouped the heterogeneous 

 host of dragon-flies, May-flies, ant-lions, lace-winged flies et al., with their 

 thin netted- or nerve-veined wings, in the order Neuroptera. 



In the light of our present greatly increased knowledge of the structure 

 and development (the two bases of classification) of insects, this primary 

 Linnaean arrangement can no longer be accepted as an exposition of the 

 true relationships among the larger groups of insects; that is, it is obviously 

 not a natural classification. Its greatest faults are that it groups together 

 in the Aptera degenerate wingless members of various unrelated groups with 

 the true primitively wingless insects, and places together in the Neuroptera 

 a host of insects of somewhat similar superficial appearance, but of radically 

 dissimilar fundamental structure and development. With increasing knowl- 

 edge of the characteristics of the various subgroups in the Linnaean order 

 Neuroptera, the too aberrant ones have been gradually one by one removed, 



* Aptera, from a, without, pier on, a wing; Diptera, from dis, double, pteron, a wing; 

 Lepidoptera, from lepis, a scale, pteron, a wing; Coleoptera, from koleos, a sheath, pteron, 

 a wing; Hymenoptera, from humen, a membrane, pteron, awing; Orthoptera, from orthos, 

 straight, pteron, a wing; Hemiptera, from hemi, half, pteron, a wing; Neuroptera, from 

 neuron, a nerve, pteron, a wing. 



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