25 
PLATE VIII. 
ILLUSTRATION OF A LARGE SPECIES OF WINGLESS PHASMA. 
The family of Phasmidse comprises numerous singular species 
of Orthopterous insects, which, from their striking resemblance to 
shrivelled leaves and pieces of dried stricks, have received the 
ordinary names of walking-leaves and walking-stick-insects. If 
therefore, in a former plate (5) we have given an instance in which 
flowers assume the appearance of insects, we here find the analogy 
reversed by perceiving that insects may assume the exact appear¬ 
ance of parts of plants ; indeed, so close is the resemblance in the 
genus Phyllium, or Folium ambulans, as the type of that genus 
used to be named, that we find even a Fellow of the Royal Society 
(Dr. Bradley) gravely endeavouring to explain the singular produc¬ 
tion by informing us that “ the insect is nourished by the juices of 
the tree, and grows together with the leaves till all the body is 
perfected, and at the fall of the leaf drops from the tree with the 
leaves growing to its body like wings, and then walks about.” 
Another division of the family (composed of the stick-insects) has 
received the systematic name of Phasma, from the spectre-like 
appearance of the creatures, compared with the ordinary form of 
the insect tribes, and in many of these the wings are wanting in 
both or one of the sexes. 
The insect before us, one of the largest in the family, belongs to 
the last-named group, but differs from all the genera and sub¬ 
genera recently proposed by Gray, Burmeister, and Serville.. It 
approaches the Phasma dilatata (Heteropteryx d. Gray) and 
Diapherodes Gigas, of the West Indies, but differs from both in 
the ovipositor, tarsi, and very minute state of the wings, (* and -f*), 
of which only the slightest rudiments are visible. I therefore pro¬ 
pose to regard it as a separate intermediate sub-genus, under the 
name of 
CRASPEDONIA. 
$ .Corpus magnum planum subapterum. Caput ocellisdestitutum. Antennae longae, 
articulo lmo crasso, 2ndo brevi, 3tio et sequentibus (longioribus) sequalibus, apica- 
libus longioribus. Prothorax longitudine capitis. Mesothorax prothorace triplo 
longior, postice sensim dilatatus, lateribus utrinque spinis nonnullis bievissimis 
armatis. Alee antics rudimentales minutse, ad apicem mesothoracis affixas*. Meta¬ 
thorax mesothoraci longitudine mqualis sed latior, lateribus spinosisj ala? postica? 
minutissima?, in medio metathoracis vix distinguendaef. Abdomen thorace toto fere 
dimidio longius, supra segmentis 9 constans, basi metathorace latius, sensim vero 
