THE TASMANIAN NATURALIST. 
47 
I he eggs are usually deposited in mass, and not singly as with most insects. 
The order is divided into several main 
groups, such as the grasshoppers and 
crickets, walking stick insects, praying in¬ 
sects and earwigs. The white ants are 
also sometimes referred to the order. 
With the exception of the praying insects, 
they are nearly all plant feeders. 
To the order belong some of the worst 
pests known, and many records of famines 
caused by visitations of grasshoppers or 
locusts are noted in the llible, and other 
ancient records In Tasmania we have 
seldom been seriously troubled by such pests, although on the main¬ 
land, in some years, thousands of head of stock have been lost by 
famines caused by grasshoppers. 
The largest known insects belong to the order, some of the 
walking-stick insects measuring over a foot in length when the legs 
are stretched out. And in Tasmania, the longest (although not the 
bulkiest) insect belongs to this order. Their colours are frequently 
green, but these usually change to a dingy yellow or brown shortly 
after death, and especially if the specimens have been preserved in spirits. 
(tRASSHOPPKR 
( Chortoicctes terminij'era). 
liymenoptera, or Wasps, Ants, Bees, &c. 
To this order belong the ants, bees, hornets, sawflies, ich¬ 
neumon flies, &c. Some of them, as the bees, are directly useful to 
man ; and others are indirectly useful by checking the undue multi¬ 
plication of destructive insects. Comparatively few are destructive. 
The species differ 
widely in their var¬ 
ious stages, the larva 
being frequently a 
legless, maggot-like 
object, changing to 
an inactive pupal 
form, in which, as 
with the beetles, the 
wings are traceable; 
and finally to the 
winged form ; al¬ 
though in some 
groups the males 
are winged and fe¬ 
males not (in one 
group, not repre¬ 
sented in Tasmania, 
the females are win- i CRNEUM0N p EY (Pamscus) and side view of abdomen, 
ged, but not the 
males). They are provided with jaws, although, as with the bees, there 
is also a tongue which is used for obtaining food of a liquid nature. 
