ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE LAC INSECT. 201 



larly, they were observed to possess much longer antennae ; and therefore 

 it was concluded that they were males, which afterwards proved to be the 

 case. Several of them were collected for description, and a small portion 

 of one of the branches, more or less covered by the incrusted young, 

 brought away, to show how the secretion of the lac was progressing. The 

 male is a little larger than the young ones at their exit from the parent ; it 

 has larger antenna?, which are hairy-plumose, and consist of seven articula- 

 tions, not including the two basal ones ; four eyes, two lateral and two 

 underneath the head ; two long hair -like appendages ; covered with white 

 powder, proceeding from the penultimate segment above ; and a beak-like 

 horny extension from the last segment, which is curved a little downwards, 

 and composed of two members, an upper and a lower one, both grooved, 

 and forming together a cylindrical channel, through which the semen is 

 conveyed into the female. Thus the changes which the larva undergoes 

 during incarceration, to produce the male, consist in an enlargement and 

 alteration in form of the antenna?; in the differentiation of tbe head, and 

 the addition of two large eyes underneath it, which appear to be for the 

 purpose of enabling the male, as he crawls over the lac covering the 

 females, to find out the apertures in it that lead to the vulva? ; in the 

 addition of the male organ, and in the replacing of the two hairs growing 

 from the penultimate segment on either side of the tail by two delicate 

 white twisted cords, composed of the attenuated extremities of the trachea?. 

 There are further differences between the sexes at this period, in the female 

 having lost all traces of eyes, antenna?, and legs ; whilst, no differentiation 

 having taken place between the head and body, the female is reduced to a 

 mere elliptical sac, with but faint traces of the original segmentation. 

 From the thorax, however, project the two white tufts of tracbea?, which 

 are absent in the male, and also a tuft from the anal extremity, the two 

 hairs before alluded to having disappeared altogether ; but the row of hairs 

 round the anus, which are now absent in the male, still remain in the 

 female, and appear to serve the purpose chiefly of preventing the secretion 

 of lac from covering up the anal aperture. At this period only, tbe bodies 

 of both male and female are about the same' size (viz., about l-27th of an 

 inch long) ; but while the former has become more highly developed and 

 eliminated, for the performance of his special function, the latter has 

 become retrograde and permanently incarcerated for hers. So un- 

 sparingly does nature deal with her forms for the development of tbe 

 new being. 



Impregnation. — After having taken home the small portion of the branch 

 above mentioned, which was covered more or less with the newly incrusted 

 brood, on which there were no free males, I was astonished, on taking it up 

 an hour or two later, to observe that two had made their appearance, and 

 were actively engaged in impregnating the females. This they do by 

 drawing the organ before described downwards and a little forwards, just 

 over the hole in the lac which leads to the anal orifice of the female, and 

 then inserting it ; after which the male sits on the hole, as it were, for a 



