3 86 
TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS. 
of the eggs within. These jiggers produce deep ulcerations, which 
give a great deal of trouble before they can be healed. 
Packard considers the flea in the light of a wingless fly, and 
agrees with Baron Osten Sacken, that it is a degraded genus of 
the family to which belong some small Mycetophilce , that live in 
mushrooms and toadstools during their larval condition. The 
metamorphoses of the flea agree closely with those of these small 
insects. He states : “ In its adult condition the flea combines 
the characters of the Diptera with certain features of the grass- 
hoppers and cockroaches and the bugs ( Hemiptera :).” No wonder, 
then, that this aggregation of unpleasant characteristics is fierce, 
bloodthirsty, and agile. The same author states that “ there are 
minute wing-pads instead of wings present in some species.” 
The Strepsiptera are very singular insects, being remarkable 
from their peculiar method of life and the nature of their growth. 
Towards the end of the last century Professor Rossi, of Pisa, 
discovered a species which was parasitic on wasps, and he thought 
that it belonged to the Ichneumons , and lately Dr. Peck, an 
American naturalist, has discovered another species ( Xenos Peckii), 
which lives in the body of wasps, like the most interesting insect 
we are about to notice. Kirby discovered an insect many years 
since which had most extraordinary structural characteristics and 
habits, and he described it as the type of the Strepsiptera. These 
insects have the front wings rudimentary, and only existing in 
the shape of long and narrow offshoots or balancers ; but the 
posterior wings, on the contrary, are very much developed, and 
are membranous, being capable of folding up like a fan. The 
eyes are globular and prominent, the antennae are short, and the 
structures of the mouth are free. It soon became evident that 
only the males of the insect were known. 
Siebold, in 1843, having obtained some eggs, was able to 
observe the larvae, and he soon discovered that the females of 
Sty/ops, one of the Strepsiptera , were blind, had no legs, and always 
retained the appearance of larvae, and that they never quitted 
the bodies of those insects in which they pass a parasitic exist- 
ence. George Newport paid great attention to the history of 
these 'curious insects, and when he wrote his article “ Insecta ” 
in the Cyclopcedia of Anatomy and Physiology , four distinct genera 
