40 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society, Vol. XIV 
etc., exhibit a marked tendency to hide under stones, ete. I find 
this proclivity to hide under stones or in sheltered locations so 
widespread, that it has suggested the possibility of such a pro- 
clivity (in conjunction with the development of suitable body 
conditions ultimately leading to the development of subterranean 
existence, as well as to a wood-boring existence, and adaptations 
to similar environmental conditions). According to this view, the 
hiding propensity, in conjunction with the gradual development of 
suitable bodily conditions, would eventually enable insects to bore 
in wood, particularly during the more suitable larval state, and 
thus giving more protection, better food conditions, and similar 
advantages, would tend to perpetuate and to intensify tendencies 
developing along the line of the production of a metamorphosis ; 
but such modes of life did not originate the tendency toward the 
development of a metamorphosis. 
I do not agree with Lameere in his derivation of the higher 
insects, and therefore do not consider that the origin of meta- 
morphosis is necessarily monophyletic, though it does occur 
among some members of the ancestral group from which holo- 
metabolous insects were descended. I would rather consider 
metamorphosis as the gradual development of a tendency for im- 
mature stages to differ from the adult stages (as evidenced by 
lower insects such as Odonata, Plecoptera, etc.) and when this 
tendency had eventually resulted in the production of types 
capable of invading new realms (whether these consisted of new 
media, such as water, wood, earth, etc., or whether new regions 
of the earth, etc., could be invaded, is immaterial) which the more 
conservative adult type of creature, as such, could not enter as 
successfully, these new types were preserved and “accentuated” — 
by natural selection. 
(Continued in June Bulletin.) 
