CHAPTER XI. 
TIIE SYSTEMATIC POSITION OF THE ORTHOPTERA IN RELATION TO 
OTHER ORDERS OF INSECTS. 
It may not be out of place, considering the amount of space given in 
the reports of the Commission to matters of a practical nature, and also 
taking into account the fact that these reports are widely sent to ento- 
mologists, as well as to farmers and planters, to give the scientific reader 
a brief sketch or abstract of the results of an examination of the ex- 
ternal anatomy of the Orthoptera in general, of which the locust is a 
type. This we have attempted to do, but in undertaking this task we 
have been led perforce to examine those iusects allied to the Ortho- 
ptera, i. c., the Pseudoneuroptera and Neuroptera. This has led us to 
review the characteristics of the four lowest orders of winged insects. 
The results of this review we here present for the consideration of zool- 
ogists. It is believed that so detailed a survey of the external anatomy, 
especially of the thorax, of so many forms has not been made before, 
although much more thorough and exhaustive studies on a few insects 
have been made by Audouin, MacLeay, Newport, Strauss-Durckheim, 
Ilammond, and others. The results have led us to quite different con- 
clusions respecting the classification of the Neuroptera and Orthoptera, 
as originally limited by Lin mens, from those which we have heretofore 
held. Our work is based ou the researches of Audouin, MacLeay, and 
Newport, and the terms here used will be found explained in their orig- 
inal works, as well as in the author’s “Guide to the Study of Insects.” 
The reader is also referred to our account of the external anatomy of 
the locust in the Second Report of this Commission. 
Any one who lias examined a cockroach and a white ant, and seen 
how closely they resemble each other, must have felt that so far from 
representing two distinct orders, they appear rather to be types of two 
allied families of the same order. Again, while the larval cockroach 
or larval Forficula closely resemble the Thysanurous Lepisma, on the 
other hand a larval Perla also nearly approximates to a Lepisma. The 
explanation of these facts is to be sought in the probable genealogical 
history of the Orthoptera, which, with the Pseudoneuroptera and Der- 
matoptera, are evidently descendants from an ancestral form like Le- 
pisma, their larva? closely resembling this Thysanuran. We have there- 
fore indicated in this chapter the probable lines of descent from the 
primitive hypothetical Thysanuran. 
In making these studies we have, in order to be unbiased, disre- 
garded the works of others, and gone over the field anew, as if nothing 
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