Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses

orgi - A. S. (Alpheus Spring) Packard

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Publié le	08 décembre 2010
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Common
Insects, by Alpheus Spring Packard
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Title: Our Common Insects
A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields,
Forests,
Gardens and Houses
Author: Alpheus Spring Packard
Release Date: January 23, 2008 [EBook #24409]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
OUR COMMON INSECTS ***
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AMERICAN SILK WORM (MALE). AMERICAN SILK
WORM (MALE).
OUR
COMMON INSECTS.
A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE
INSECTS
OF OUR
Fields, Forests, Gardens and
Houses.
Illustrated with 4 Plates and 268 Woodcuts.BY
A. S. PACKARD, Jr.,
Author of "A Guide To the Study of Insects."
SALEM
NATURALISTS' AGENCY.
Boston: Estes & Lauriat. New York: Dodd & Mead.
1873.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year
1878, by
F. W. PUTNAM & CO.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at
Washington.
PRINTED AT
THE SALEM PRESS,
F. W. PUTNAM & CO.,
Proprietors.
CONTENTS
DEDICATION.
PREFACE.
INTRODUCTORY.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
INDEX.
DEDICATION.
TO SAMUEL H. SCUDDER.
My Dear Scudder:—You and I were drawn together
many years ago by a common love for insects and
their ways.
I dedicate this little volume of ephemeral essays to
you in recognition of your worth as a man and a
scientist, and as a token of warm friendship.
Yours sincerely,
A. S. Packard, Jr.PREFACE.
This little volume mainly consists of a reprint of a
series of essays which appeared in the "American
Naturalist" (Vols. i-v, 1867-71). It is hoped that their
perusal may lead to a better acquaintance with the
habits and forms of our more common insects. The
introduction was written expressly for this book, as
well as Chapter XIII, "Hints on the Ancestry of
Insects." The scientific reader may be drawn with
greater interest to this chapter than to any other
portion of the book. In this discussion of a perhaps
abstruse and difficult theme, his indulgence is sought
for whatever imperfections or deficiencies may
appear. Our systems of classification may at least be
tested by the application of the theory of evolution.
The natural system, if we mistake not, is the
genealogy of organized forms; when we can trace the
latter, we establish the former. Considering how much
naturalists differ in their views as to what is a natural
classification, it is not strange that a genealogy of
animals or plants seems absurd to many. To another
generation of naturalists it must, perhaps, be left to
decide whether to attempt the one is more
unphilosophical than to attempt the other.
Most of the cuts have already appeared in the "Guide
to the Study of Insects" and the "American Naturalist,"
where their original sources are given, while a few
have been kindly contributed by Prof. A. E. Verrill, theBoston Society of Natural History, and Prof. C. V.
Riley, and three are original.
Salem, June, 1873.
OUR COMMON INSECTS.
INTRODUCTORY.
1. Spider (Tegenaria). 1. Spider (Tegenaria).
What is an Insect? When we remember that the
insects alone comprise four-fifths of the animal
kingdom, and that there are upwards of 200,000 living
species, it would seem a hopeless task to define what
an insect is. But a common plan pervades the
structure of them all. The bodies of all insects consist
of a succession of rings, or segments, more or less
hardened by the deposition of a chemical substance
called chitine; these rings are arranged in three
groups: the head, the thorax, or middle body, and the
abdomen or hind body. In the six-footed insects, such
as the bee, moth, beetle or dragon fly, four of these
rings unite early in embryonic life to form the head; the
thorax consists of three, as may be readily seen on
slight examination, and the abdomen is composed
either of ten or eleven rings. The body, then, seems
divided or insected into three regions, whence the
name insect.
The head is furnished with a pair of antennæ, a pair of
jaws (mandibles), and two pairs of maxillæ, thesecond and basal pair being united at their base to
form the so-called labium, or under lip. These four
pairs of appendages represent the four rings of the
head, to which they are appended in the order stated
above.
A pair of legs is appended to each of the three rings of
the thorax; while the first and second rings each
usually carry a pair of wings.
2. Centipede. 2. Centipede.
The abdomen contains the ovipositor; sometimes, as
in the bees and wasps, forming a sting. In the spiders
(Fig. 1), however, there are no antennæ, and the
second maxillæ, or labium, is wanting. Moreover,
there are four pairs of legs. The centipedes (Fig. 2, a
Myriopod) also differ from the rest of the insects in
having an indefinite number of abdominal rings, each
bearing a pair of legs.
On examining the arrangement of the parts within, we
find the nervous cord, consisting of two chains of
swellings, or nerve-knots, resting upon the floor or
under side of the body; and the heart, or dorsal
vessel, situated just under the skin of the back; and in
looking at living caterpillars, such as the cut-worm, and
many thin-skinned aquatic larvæ, we can see this long
tubular heart pulsating about as often as our own
heart, and when the insect is held against its will, or is
agitated, the rapidity of the pulsations increases just
as with us.
Insects do not breathe as in the higher animals by
taking the air into the mouth and filling the lungs, buttaking the air into the mouth and filling the lungs, but
there are a series of holes or pores along the side of
the body, as seen in the grub of the humble bee,
through which the air enters and is conveyed to every
part of the body by an immense number of air tubes.
(Fig. 3, air tubes, or tracheæ, in the caudal appendage
of the larva of a dragon fly). These air tubes are
everywhere bathed by the blood, by which the latter
becomes oxygenated.
Indeed the structure of an insect is entirely different
from that of man or the quadrupeds, or any other
vertebrate animal, and what we call head, thorax,
abdomen, gills, stomach, skin, or lungs, or jaws, are
called so simply for convenience, and not that they are
made in the same way as those parts in the higher
animals.
3. Caudal appendage of larva of Agrion. 3. Caudal
appendage of larva of Agrion.
An insect differs from a horse, for example, as much
as a modern printing press differs from the press
Franklin used. Both machines are made of iron, steel,
wood, etc., and both print; but the plan of their
structure differs throughout, and some parts are
wanting in the simpler press which are present and
absolutely essential in the other. So with the two sorts
of animals; they are built up originally out of
protoplasm, or the original jelly-like germinal matter,
which fills the cells composing their tissues, and nearly
the same chemical elements occur in both, but the
mode in which these are combined, the arrangement
of their products: the muscular, nervous and skin
tissues, differ in the two animals. The plan ofstructure, namely, the form and arrangement of the
body walls, the situation of the appendages to the
body, and of the anatomical systems within, i.e., the
nervous, digestive, circulatory, and respiratory
systems, differ in their position in relation to the walls
of the body. Thus while the two sorts of animals
reproduce their kind, eat, drink and sleep, see, hear
and smell, they perform these acts by different kinds
of organs, situated sometimes on the most opposite
parts of the body, so that there is no comparison save
in the results which they accomplish; they only agree
in being animals, and in having a common animal
nature.
4. Different forms of jaws. 4. Different forms of jaws.
5. Mouth parts of the Larva of a Beetle. 5. Mouth
parts of the Larva of a Beetle.
6. Maxilla of a Beetle. 6. Maxilla of a Beetle.
How Insects Eat. The jaws of insects (Fig. 4) are
horny processes situated on each side of the mouth.
They are variously toothed, so as to tear the food, and
move horizontally instead of up and down as in the
horse. The act of taking the food, especially if the
insect be carnivorous in its habits, is quite complex, as
not only the true jaws, but the accessory jaws
(maxillæ, Fig. 5, a, upper, b, under side of the head of
a young beetle; at, antennæ, md, mandible, mx,
maxillæ, mx[1], labium) and th