LEAF-INSECTS 



267 



coloured from the rest of the organ. The colour of the body in 

 many Phasmidae is said to be very variable, and if the tints be 

 owing to chlorophyll or other plant juices, finding their way amongst 

 the Insect-tissues, this is readily understood ; in Diapheromera 

 the young Insect is brownish on hatching, becomes green after 

 feeding, and turns brown again when the leaves do so. The 

 ocelli, too, are said to be very variable, and M'Coy goes so far 

 as to state ^ that they may be either present or absent in different 

 individuals though of the same species and sex, — a statement so 

 remarkable as to require minute examination, though it is to some 

 extent confirmed by the remarks of other entomologists. 



The resemblance presented by different kinds of Orthoptera 

 to leaves is so remarkable that it has attracted attention even in 

 countries where Natural History is almost totally neglected ; in 

 many such places the inhabitants 

 are firmly convinced that the 

 Insects are truly transformed 

 leaves, by which they understand 

 a bud developing into a leaf and 

 subsequently becoming a walking- 

 leaf or Insect. To them the 

 change is a kind of metamor- 

 phosis of habit ; it grew as a leaf 

 and then took to walking.^ It 

 is usually the tegmina that dis- 

 play this great resemblance to 

 vegetable structures, and there is 

 perhaps no case in which the 

 phenomenon is more marked than 

 it is in the genus Phylliuvi, the 

 members of which occur only in 

 the tropical regions of the Old 

 World, where they extend from 

 Mauritius and the Seychelles to 

 the Piji Islands — possibly even 

 more to the East — and have, it would appear, a peculiar penchant 

 for insular life. The genus Phyllium constitutes by itself the 

 tribe Phylliides. Although the characters and affinities of this 



1 Prod. Zool. Vidm-ia, Decade vii. 1882, p. 34. 

 ^ See de Borre, CR. Soc. ent. Bdcjique, xxvii. 1883, p. cxliii. 



Fig. 154. — Phyllium scythe, female. 

 Sylhet. (After Westwood.) 



