1947] 
Early Insect Life 
83 
psocid wings. The best known of the Lower Permian 
Hemiptera had a long, straight tube projecting from the 
end of the abdomen, but whether this was an ovipositor 
or respiratory tube remains to be determined. By Upper 
Permian time the Homoptera had developed a variety of 
families, some of them approaching certain existing fami- 
lies (Figure 8). There can be no doubt, on the basis of 
their known structure, that these early bugs had already 
settled down to a diet of plant juices. 
We now come to the two remaining orders of insects 
which appear in the Lower Permian, the Mecoptera and 
Neuroptera. Their presence in Lower Permian rocks is 
Figure 8. P er mo cicada inter g a Beck. (Order Hemiptera), from the Upper 
Permian of Bussia. (After Becker-Migdisova.) 
interesting and surprising. Since existing members of 
both these orders have complete metamorphosis, we can 
conclude that the Permian species also had that type of 
development— unless, of course, we grant that complete 
metamorphosis might have arisen independently in the 
two orders, which seems improbable. True larval forms 
have been found in Permian deposits of Kansas, but their 
ordinal affinities have not been determined with certainty. 
The Lower Permian Mecoptera, or scorpion-flies, were 
very small, with a wing expanse of about an inch, though 
some of the later Permian species were more nearly the 
size of existing members of the order. Their body struc- 
ture was much like that of certain living genera, such as 
the Australian Chorista , the head including a short ros- 
trum (Figure 9). During the late Permian, and, inci- 
