Vol. XXviii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 4OI 



from the condition characteristic of the ancestors of certain 

 other hexapodan groups, and, to my mind, the study of recent 

 forms is even more instructive than the study of fossil insects, 

 from the phylogenetic standpoint, since we are able to compare 

 together more detailed structures in living forms, than it is 

 possible to do in the distorted and usually imperfectly preserved 

 fossil forms, the most of which are practically as highly special- 

 ized along their own lines of development as the most primitive 

 of living forms are ! 



In the interesting insect Grylloblatta campodcifonnis Walker 

 we hold the key to the genealogy of the Orthopteroid insects 

 (such as the Tettigonids, Gryllids. Locustids, etc.) and any 

 attempt to trace the ancestry of these Orthopteroid forms, 

 in which the evidence of affinities with the lower groups, 

 furnished by the study of Grylloblatta, is ignored, is fore- 

 doomed to failure. On this account, I would present some of 

 the evidence of relationship gained from a comparative study 

 of the Grylloblattids and Embiids, since I am convinced that 

 the Grylloblattids are extremely closely related to the Embiids, 

 and are therefore ultimately to be derived from Plecoptera-like 

 ancestors (since the Embiid line of development parallels 

 that of the Plecoptera more closely than any of the lowest 

 Pterygotan forms). 



In an article dealing with the antennae of the Grylloblattids 

 and Embiids, which will shortly appear* in the Canadian En- 

 tomologist. I have pointed out the astonishing similarity in the 

 antennae of these two groups of insects — a similarity shown 

 not only in the close agreement in the number of antennal 

 segments, but which extends even to the more minute details 

 of relative size and outline in the individual segments of the 

 antennae in the two groups. On the other hand, the antennae 

 of both Embiids and Grylloblattids are entirely different from 

 those of the typical Blattids in regard to precisely those features 

 v/herein they are most similar to one another! In the present 

 paper, I would endeavor to demonstrate that the remarkable 



* Subsequently published in Vol. XLIX, No. 6, page 213, of the 

 Canadian Entomologist. 



