1H83.] MR. J. WOOD-MASON ON THE FAMILY EMBItD^. 629 



that had up to that time fallen into the hands of entomologists were 

 of the male sex, and that the females were consequently unknown ; 

 for in all the specimens examined by me the abdomen invariably pre- 

 sented a mesially imperforate series of nine sterna, the ninth and 

 terminal of which was produced nearly to the extremity of tlie body 

 so as to cover the tenth sternum and its contained genital aperture, 

 just as in male Cockroaches, Earwigs, &c. ; it exhibited a greater 

 or less degree of asymmetry of its terminal somites or of their 

 appendages or of both, as in many male Cockroaches, Phastnatidae, 

 Lepidoptera, Trichoptera\ &c. ; and, moreover, an asymmetrical 

 system of highly indurated spines and hooks springing asymme- 

 trically from its podical plates, and analogous to the similar, but 

 usually more complicated, apparatus developed around the genital 

 aperture in male Cockroaches and Mantodea, could generally be 

 made out. 



I also formed the opinion that the females when discovered would 

 prove to be wingless, and probably larger in size. 



Both conclusion and opinion have since been fully verified by the 

 careful examination of living and spirit-specimens of indubitable 

 males, and by the discovery of the larger and wingless female of one 

 species ; from which latter fact I have no hesitation in inferring 

 greater size and winglessness in the females of all the species of the 

 group. 



Discovery of Larvce of a Species apparently living in Society. — 

 My first acquaintance with a living species of Einbiidse was made a few 

 hours after landing in India, on thejouiney by rail from Bombay to 

 Calcutta, in the end of July 1879, at Jubbulpore, where I was obliged 

 to stay a night in order to break the journey. While strolling about 

 in front of the hotel about noon on the following day I came upon 

 a bare and sandy spot, over which larvae of a species of Embiidse 

 were actively running by dozens ; and I succeeded in capturing a 

 number of specimens, both in the open and beneath the old bricks 

 that lay scattered about and had evidently been used in the construc- 

 tion of rude fire-places for cooking their food by a party of coolies 

 by whom the spot had a short time before been occupied as a 



^ I am indebted to Mr. M'Lachlau for the following information concei-ning 

 the asymmetry of the male anal appendages in this order of insects. Inequality 

 is not confined to any special portion or set of appendages, and occurs in all 

 the four or five species of the genus Glossosoma, and is generic, affecting tlie 

 ventral portion of the anal apparatus ; in an undesoribed species of Leptocerus, 

 from Portugal, in a pair of inner processes, which in other most closely allied 

 species are equal (a long series of specimens examined) ; in Scfodes interrupfa, 

 in which one pair of appendages extends far beyond the extremity of the body, 

 and is, as I can testify from having inspected Mr. M'Lachlan's drawings, 

 tremendously imequal ; and probably in other species. The last case is, as Mr. 

 M'Lachlan writes, especially " remarkable, because there is another species 

 {8. siinilis, M'L., represented by many individuals) fi-om Turkestan so similar 

 in all other respects that it did not occur to me [him] at first to consider it 

 distinct; but I [he] thought I [he] raiglit as well see if locality had caused any 

 modification, and to my [his] astonishment found a purely symmetrical and 

 utterly different (specific) condition (correlated with a very slight and unim- 

 portant difference in wing-markiugs)." 



