B74 New York State Agricultural Society. 
a specimen, which is a female. The past season I have been so 
fortunate as to meet with it again, the specimen now obtained being 
a male, showing this sex to be still more of a paradox than is the* 
female. I know not whether any other specimens of this insect have 
ever been found. It is an object of so much scientific interest that I 
here present an account of it: 
Whoever meets with the male of this insect, his notice will first 
be attracted to the remarkably long, stout pair of forceps with which 
it is furnished, giving to its long, narrow body such a close resem¬ 
blance to an earwig ( Forficula ) that he will think it probably per¬ 
tains to that family of insects. But on coming to see that its wings 
are of ordinary structure, filled with fine longitudinal veins; that its 
feet are five instead of three-jointed; that its head is retracted and 
almost entirely hid under the thorax, with the face flattened and held 
backward, the mouth pressing upon the breast, and with the eyes 
kidney-shaped and the antennae inserted in the notch on their inner 
side, his second thought will be that it is a cockroach ( Blatta ) fur¬ 
nished with a forceps, and thus giving it a relationship to the kindred 
group Forficula. It is not till he happens to observe that the four 
wings, though broad and hyaline, with the first pair smoky, and thus 
resembling wing covers, are yet alike in size and are destitute of any 
plaits or folds, that he becomes aware it may pertain to the order 
ISTeueopteea instead of Oetiiopteea, where its resemblances to an ear- 
w'ig and a cockroach would place it. Even then, he notices so many 
points in which the specimen appears more like the insects of the 
latter than of the former order (the broad costal or outer area of the 
■wings, no spot in this area answering to a stigma, no small eyes, etc.) 
that he is in doubt whether it may not be an Orthopter with wings 
not perfectly developed, as is the case with several of the species of 
tliis and other orders. • 
To ascertain if it pertains to the Neuroptera, he searches through 
this order for insects having the end of the body equipped as it is 
here, but he nowhere finds any which are described as corresponding 
with it in this particular. The only approach to a structure of this 
kind appears to be in the family Panobpida:, where the males have 
the tip of the body furnished with a pair of claws or hooks much 
resembling the jaws of many insects, these hooks having their sharp 
points directed forward over the end of the back, their size, form, and 
position being quite unlike the forceps of this insect. And when he 
reads that “ this family Panoepida: is at once distinguished by the 
front of the head being produced into an elongated slender deflexed 
