Miscellaneous. 485 



dition of some other appendages. Thus, the maxillae are formed 

 always of several parts situated one by the side of the other, or in 

 other words, are constantly divided into two or three branches. The 

 legs as well as the antennee of certain Crustacea offer the same 

 arrangement, while, on the contrary, these parts are commonly simple 

 in Insects ; but it occasionally happens that they become ramified, 

 and in such apparently anomalous cases the general normal structure 

 of the appendage is simply reproduced. 



In regard to these representative transformations, it is already 

 known that M. Savigny has very ably pointed out the essential con- 

 formity of structure that subsists between the oral organs of the 

 Haustellate and Mandibulate Insects, and advanced the opinion that 

 the labium of Insects is formed of a pair of consolidated maxillae. The 

 same results have been obtained by M. Oken, who in working out 

 this idea was led to infer, from the examination of the organ in 

 certain insects, that the labrum was similarly constructed. Corre- 

 sponding results may be predicated of the parts called hypo- and epi- 

 pharynx, and thus we have all the parts of the mouth in Insects 

 reduced to the law of " unity of composition." 



If the pieces of the mouth are considered in reference to the 

 elements which constitute them, this unity of composition may be 

 readily demonstrated. M. Burmeister has recently determined the 

 presence of these elementary pieces of the maxillas in the structure 

 of the labium, and has detected them also in the mandibles, but only 

 in some species, for they are in general intimately united. There 

 are even mandibles, which in certain instances, as in the Insecta 

 and Scolopendrse, are not inferior in degree of complexity to maxillae. 

 By such a method of examination we arrive at the conclusion, that 

 an appendage the most complex may be yet situated in different 

 parts of the body in different Articulata. Thus in Insects it is the 

 maxillce which are the most complex ; in the Cmstacea it is the foot 

 jmos ; in the Myriapoda it is the mandibles, if indeed these last be not 

 regarded as the true analogues of the maxillae. 



For many years names have been applied to the different pieces 

 of the maxillae in some Articulata, as the Coleoptera. It remains for 

 us to trace out the same pieces in the maxillae of other Insects, and in 

 those of the Arachnida, Myriapoda and Crustacea. In pursuing this 

 investigation, passing from the more complex condition of the maxilla 

 in the Coleoptera to its more simjile type in the Orthoptera and 

 Neuroptera, and thence to that of the Hymenoptera, we are led 

 finally to determine in what the greatly elongated maxillae of the 

 Lepidoptera consist, and thus attain to a rational knowledge of the 

 essential constituents of that organ in the Haustellate Insects. In 

 the butterfly, the hypertrophy of one of the elements of the maxillfe 

 has annihilated the others, and in uniting with that of the opposite side 

 to constitute a perfect tube, affords an example of a transitory con- 

 dition of the labium, from which a single step in advance, and we 

 are conducted to a permanent state of the lower lip in which the 

 two halves are perfectly fused together. 



In conclusion, the preceding observations most incontestably 



