Article beginning on page 405.
Psyche 6:405, 1891.

Full text (searchable PDF)
Durable link: http://psyche.entclub.org/6/6-405.html

The following unprocessed text is extracted from the PDF file, and is likely to be both incomplete and full of errors. Please consult the PDF file for the complete article.

February 1893.1
PSYCHE.
2. The antennae of insects belong to the first postoral segment and are entirely homol- ogous with the remaining ventral extremities. They do not correspond to the antennae of Peripatus, but probably to the chelicerae of spiders, and perhaps to the second pair of antennae of Crustacea.
3. Since the possibility that a number of segments in the germinal streak of different arthropods have disappeared is not excluded, a homology of the mouth-parts of the different classes of Arthropoda cannot at present be set up.
4. The abdominal appendages of the
insectan germinal streak (including the
cerci) are homologous with the thoracic legs. Herein it makes no difference whether these appendages are attached to the middle, at the side, at the front, or hind margin (are meso-, pleuro-, pro-, or opisthostatic, in the terminology of Graber), provided only that their cavity is immediately continuous with that of the somite to which they belong. The fact that the abdominal appendages
usually remain unsegmented in nowise tends to show that they are not of the natuie of limbs, since, for instance, the mandibles also are always unsegmented.*
5. Many of the abdominal appendaqes of
larvae and perfect insects are homologous with the thoracic legs, even when they are secondary in ontogeny.
6. The primitive function of the first pair of the abdominal appendages was ambulatory, as also that of the remaining appendages. The ancestors of the insects were therefore undoubtedly homopod, not heteropod.
7. The many-legged insect larvae are to
be derived from the six-legged just as little as are, conversely, the hexapod iarvae from the polypod; both forms developed indepen- dently of one another.
8. The embryonic envelopes of the insects probably correspond to the remains of a
trochosphere.
*Whether the segmented branchial filaments of Sisyra and Sialis belong to this category is doubtful, but can only be decided by embryological investiga- tions.
WESTWOOD AND STAINTON.
The death on Jan. 2 of Prof. J. 0. West- wood of Oxford at the advanced age of 87 removes the most distinguished entomologist of our time. For sixty-five years his contri- butions to our science have been uninter- rupted and have enriched and advanced every branch of systematicentomology. No writer has made known so many singular forms,
for which he seems to have had a remarkable predeliction. He had a Latreillean eye for structure and he depicted insects with rare skill ; of his published drawings there must be many thousands, and they are of the ut- most service to the systematist; yet his port- folios are crowded with unpublished figures. His Introduction to the classification of in- sects, though half a century old, is a store- house of fact and historical statement, ad- mirably presented and still our best general guide ; but to do for the entomology of today what he did for that of 1840 would require treble the space he gave to it. "No entomolo- gist the world over has been held in such reverent esteem by Americans as Westwood. News comes from Englind of the death of
Mr. H. T. Stainton at the age of 70. His studies of the Tineina are well known to all American enton~ologists and he will be
remembered especially by them for his careful collocation of the scattered papers of our own Brackenridge Clemens on the subject.
Stain-
ton did much to interest the young in entom- ology and edited journals especially
intended for the tyro and collector. His work on the Tineina was curiously published in four different languages in parallel col- umns. Most of us are glad to publish in one. ENTOMOLOGICAL NOTES. - The first vol-
ume of Moore's gigantic undertaking upon the Lepidoptera Indica is now completed
with the publication of Part 12. This fine quarto volume, dedicated to the Empress of India and begun in 1890, contains 340 pages and 94 colored plates, and yet deals with only two subfamilies of Nymphalidae - the Eu- ploeinae and Satyrinae.
Early in 1891 Osten Sacken proposed a new



================================================================================

PSYCHE.
[February 1893..
grouping of the Diptera orthosrhapha, which he has now published in detail in English in the Berliner entom. zeitschr. for 1892 (pp. 417-466). His Nemocera Vera contain the
families Cecidomyidae, Mycetophilidae, Culi- cidae, Chironomidae, Psychodidae, Dixi-
dae (?), and Tipulidae ; his Nemocera anom. ah, the Bibionidae, Simulidae, Blephero- ceridae, Rhyphidae and Orphnephilidae; and his Eremochaeta, the Stratiomyidae, Taban- idae, Acanthomeridae and Leptidae (+Xylo- phagidae). His complete discussion will be found very interesting.
With the publication of the seventh part Distant has completed his Monograph of
Oriental Cicadidae, a large quarto of over 150 pages and 15 plates crowded with admirable figures. The work includes 268 species ar- ranged in 34 genera and divided into the two subfamilies of Cicadinae and Tibiceninae according as the tympana are mostly covered or uncovered. Owners of the work, which is published by the Indian Museum of Calcutta, will be glad to place it by the author's Rhopa- locera Malayans.
The recent publication of a new part of the Proceedings of the Entomological society of Washington completing vol. 2 and filled
with biological papers of broad interest, em- phasizes once more the concentration of
entomological industry at our national capital and the excellent influence exerted by the division of entomology in the U. S. depart- ment of agriculture.
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES.
CAMBRIDGE ENTOMOLOGICAL CLUB.
g December, 1892. The 174th meeting
was held at 156 Brattle St. Mr. S. H. Scudder was chosen chairman.
Mr. Howard Evarts Weed of Agricultural
College, Miss., was elected an active member. Mr. S. H. Scudder exhibited a sketch of
the body of a carboniferous walking stick, Protophasma, from Europe to show that the three divisions of the thorax must have been of nearly equal length and not as in living *
Phasmidae very unequal, the prothorax in living forms (with the exception of Prosopus, Phyllium and similar highly specialized
forms) being much shorter than the other two divisions. He stated that this was the condition now of the embryo Diapheromera just before leaving the egg, the elongation of the mesothorax and metathorax taking place during the emergence of the insect from the egg. This adds another to the numerous
instances in which the earl? types of animals- resen~bled the embryonic rather than the mature condition of their modern representa- tives.
He also stated that in the examination of a nearly ripe embryo of Dissosteira carolina, he found one of the antennae completely
developed, which the other showed only the enlarged base, the stalk being entirely absent. In the same embryo there was an entirely different arrangement of the middle legs of the two sides ; on one side, which seemed the normal, the femur overlay the hind femur and the tibia and tarsi were folded sharply back upon the femur; upon the other, the femur lay beside the hind femur, and the tibia was bent at only about a right angle to the femur; but apically was with the tarsi twice bent to keep it from extending beyond the opposite side of the body.
He remarked further on a species of Gryl- lodes found in a burrow beneath a small
sand hillock in Florida, by Mr. C. J. Maynard. Mr. A. P. Morse showed some specimens
taken by him at Wellesley, Mass., Nov. 17, 1892, of the following species : Chortophaga viridifasciata, Stenobothms cu~ti$ennis, MeZano~lus collinus, Encoptolophus sordidus and Eurymus philodice. All the specimens were mature. In the case of the first named an unusual occurrence at that season of the year.
He also showed a specimen of Xabea
bi$vnciata taken by him at New Haven,
Conn., Aug. 30. Mr. Scudder said he
thought it had not been previously taken in New England.




================================================================================