.MR. HENRY WALTER BATES ON PHASMIDÆ, 925 
non-development of the wings. This is also a proof of the homogeneity of the type; for 
we have seen how the possession of wings is little better than a specific character. 
For these reasons I have not thought it necessary, in describing the following large 
number of new species, to make any considerable alteration in the classification adopted 
by Professor Westwood. The species possessing wings in both sexes seem to be 
generally more nearly allied to each other than any of them are to apterous species. 
Some of his genera might be improved by withdrawing a portion of their contents, and 
placing them in other genera ; and it will perhaps be necessary, eventually, to establish 
several new ones; but, upon the whole, his work seems to place the forms in tolerably 
natural order. The genera with lengthened upper wings (tegmina) are properly placed 
near together, and the elongated apterous ones, with equal propriety, brought into prox- 
imity. But I think it would be very desirable to abolish the two divisions, and bring 
several of the apterous genera into nearer connexion with the winged ones. For instance, 
Lonchodes and Bacteria with Phibalosoma; Acanthoderus and Eurycantha with Hete- 
ropteryæ, and so forth. The genus Anophelepis (containing species with very rudimentary 
wings) would perhaps be better abolished, and its contents distributed amongst other 
genera—for instance, An. viphias and An. despecta to Bacteria, and An. vittata to 
Ceroys, the characters of these genera being altered to suit the change. 
Habits. —There is very little to say about the habits of the Phasmidæ. They are wholly 
vegetable feeders, and are seen in the tropical forests, where they are most numerous, 
clinging closely to stems or crawling slowly over the foliage of bushes and trees. Be- 
longing to the Orthopterous order, they, of course, do not undergo a metamorphosis in 
the proper sense of the word, having a similar form when they emerge from the egg to 
that which they present in the adult state, and continuing active at all stages of their 
existence. So similar is the full-grown larva and the so-called pupa to the adult, that the 
old authors sometimes described these adolescent forms as adult insects, and all authors 
describe new species from examples in the earlier stages, as it is generally not difficult to 
recognize the adult by a description of a pupa. They undergo several changes of integu- 
ment; and in the stage preceding the adult the wings first appear as inarticulated folia- 
ceous lobes on the thoracic segments. Like the rest of the Orthoptera, which is an order 
situated low in the scale of development of the insect type, there is very little or no con- 
solidation of the segmentary structure of the body. The Phasmidæ have the full number 
of freely-articulating segments characteristic of the abstract insect type—a feature retained 
only in the larval condition by most of the higher orders of insects with perfect metamor- 
phosis. These segments being elongated, the movements of the insects are necessarily 
sluggish ; and the slowness of movement is increased in many species by the bulk and 
weight of the entrails, the Phasmidæ being voracious feeders, and the elasticity of the 
connecting membranes of the abdominal segments admitting of increased bulk to the 
body. Wings to such creatures are not of much use as organs of distant and rapid loco- 
motion. We know that wings in some other allied families of Orthoptera are supple- 
mented by saltatorial hind legs, as in grasshoppers, crickets, &e. ; but the Phasmidæ have 
not this advantage, and the wings seem to serve little better than as parachutes, or to float 
‘their possessors from one tree to another. In the economy of the species, this limited 
