AND THE LOWER ANIMALS. 115 



sect a specimen which had the external marks of both 

 sexes, and to prove that its internal characters were 

 equally monstrous; thus showing that a moth ex- 

 hibited one of those anomalies rarest among verte- 

 brated animals. 



Among insects as among vertebrates we meet with 

 monstrous limbs. Several observers have described 

 the double and triple legs of beetles, just as Meckel 

 saw similar organs in the drake, and M. Greoffroy in 

 the sheep. 



It is questionable whether the foregoing monstro- 

 sities are really referable to that period of the animal's 

 life immediately after its emergence from the egg. In 

 fact, there is nothing to oppose the view that they 

 have occurred whilst development was going on within 

 the ovum ; but we cannot say the same of the following 

 ones. The larva does not possess antennae, and yet 

 we have seen beetles with more than the usual num- 

 ber of these organs. Stannius described a neuter bee, 

 which, like certain forms of the human foetus, fully 

 realized the fable of the Cyclops : its two compound 

 eyes were fused together, constituting a single ocular 

 mass, which was situated almost on the top of the 

 creature's head. In these two cases we can point to 

 the period when the labour of natural development 

 was interrupted. It was about the period of the last 

 month, when the larva was preparing to assume the 

 nymph form, that the disturbing cause affected the 

 course of normal organization. 



It is to this period also in the history of develop- 

 ment that we must refer a series of monsters whose 

 very forms are the best solution of the problem we 

 are trying to solve. We allude to those insects which 



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