A. S. Packard

“ Thus massed into a single awl-like beak, the mosquito, without any apparent effort, thrusts them all except the labium into the flesh. Her hind body may be seen tilling with the red blood, until it cries quits, and the insect withdraws its sting and flies sluggishly away. ”

“ On warm days myriads of these and other insects may be seen filling the air; it is the busiest time of their lives, as all are on errands of love to their kind, but of mischief to the agriculturist.
When the May Flower—"O commendable flowre and most in minde"—blooms, and the willows hang out their golden catkins, we shall hear the hum of the wild bee, and the insect hunter will reap a rich harvest of rarities. Seek now on the abdomen of various wild bees, such as Andrena, for that most eccentric of all our insects, the Stylops Childreni. ”

“ 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 light of the studies of Von Baer, of Lamarck and Darwin, should we be content to stop here, or does this ideal archetype become endowed with life and have a definite existence, becoming the ancestral form of all insects, the prototype which gave birth to the hundreds of thousands of insect forms which are now spread over our globe, just as we see daily happens where a single aphis may become the progenitor of a million offspring clustering on the same tree? ”

“ Quite early in spring, when the sun and vernal breezes have dried up the soil, and the fields exchange their rusty hues for the rich green verdure of May, our Andrena, tired of its idle life among the blossoms of the willow, the wild cherry, and garden flowers, suddenly becomes remarkably industrious, and wields its spade-like jaws and busy feet with a strange and unwonted energy. ”

“ Again, going back of the larval period, and studying the insect in the egg, we find that nearly all the insects yet observed agree most strikingly in their mode of growth, so that, for instance, the earlier stages of the germ of a bee, fly or beetle, bear a remarkable resemblance to each other, and suggest again, more forcibly than when we examine the larval condition, that a common design or pattern at first pervades all. ”

“ Indeed, to the student of nature, the evolution theory in biology, with the nebular hypothesis, and the grand law in physics of the correlation of forces, all interdependent, and revealing to us the mode in which the Creator of the Universe works in the world of matter, together form an immeasurably grander conception of the order of creation and its Ordainer, than was possible for us to form before these laws were discovered and put to practical use. ”

“ Lice are no doubt to be regarded as bugs, simplified in structure and lowered in animal life in accordance with their mode of living as parasites, being small, flattened, apterous, myopic, crawling and climbing, with a conical head, moulded as it were to suit the rugosities of the surface they inhabit, provided with a soft, transversely furrowed skin, probably endowed with an acute sense of feeling, which can guide them in that twilight in which their mode of life places them. ”

“ It is evident that in the young grasshoppers, the metamorphoses have been passed through, so to speak, in the egg, while the bee larva is almost embryonic in its build. The helpless young maggot of the wasp, which is fed solely by the parent, may be compared to the human infant, while the lusty young grasshopper, which immediately on hatching takes to the grass or clover field with all the enthusiasm of a duckling to its native pond, may be likened to that young feathered mariner. The lowest animals, as a rule, are at birth most like the adult. ”

“ The subjects of the alternation of generations, or parthenogenesis, of embryology and biology, owe their great advance, in large degree, to the study of such animals as are parasitic, and the question whether the origin of species be due to creation by the action of secondary laws or not, will be largely met and answered by the study of the varied metamorphoses and modes of growth, the peculiar modification of organs that adapt them to their strange modes of life, and the consequent variation in specific characters so remarkably characteristic of those animals living parasitically upon others. ”

“ What traditions, sagas, fables, and myths must adorn the annals of animal life regarding this Dragon among insects!
To man, however, aside from its bad name and its repulsive aspect, which its gay trappings do not conceal, its whole life is beneficent. It is a scavenger, being like that class ugly and repulsive, and holding literally, among insects, the lowest rank in society. In the water, it preys upon young mosquitoes and the larvæ of other noxious insects. It thus aids in maintaining the balance of life, and cleanses the swamps of miasmata, thus purifying the air we breathe. ”

“ The developmentist would say that this process of degradation points to causes acting upon the insect just before or immediately after birth, inducing the retrogression and retardation of development, and would consider it as an argument for the evolution of specific forms by causes acting on the animal while battling with its fellows in the struggle for existence, and perhaps consider that the metamorphoses of the animal within the egg are due to a reflex action of the modes of life of the ancestors of the animal on the embryos of its descendants. ”

“ Though our course through the different groups of insects may have seemed rambling and desultory enough, and pursued with slight reference to a natural classification of the insects of which we have spoken, yet beginning with the Hive bee, the highest intelligence in the vast world of insects, we have gradually, though with many a sudden step, descended to perhaps the most lowly organized forms among all the insects, the parasitic mites. ”

“ We could easily spare these voracious little worms hairs enough to serve as food, and to afford material for the construction of their paltry cases; but that restless spirit that ever urges on all beings endowed with life and the power of motion, never forsakes the young clothes moth for a moment. ”

“ Thus Nature deals in simples, and with her units of structure elaborates as her crowning work a temple in which the mind of man, formed in the image of God, may dwell. Her results are not the less marvellous because we are beginning to dimly trace the process by which they arise. It should not lessen our awe [Pg 186] and reverence for Deity, if with minds made to adore, we also essay to trace the movements of His hand in the origin of the forms of life. ”

“ In the structure of the bee, and in all its stages of growth, [Pg 38] our parasite seems lower in the zoölogical scale than its host. It is structurally a degraded form of Working-bee, and its position socially is unenviable. It is lazy, not having the provident habits of the Working-bees; it aids not in the least, so far as we know, the cross-fertilization of plants—one great office in the economy of nature which most bees perform,—since it is not a pollen-gatherer, but on the contrary is seemingly a drag and hinderance to the course of nature. ”

“ Having endeavored to show that the caterpillar is a later production than the young, wingless cockroach, with which geological facts harmonize, we have next to account for the origin of a metamorphosis in insects. Here it is necessary to disabuse the reader's mind of the prevalent belief that the terms larva, pupa and imago are fixed and absolute. If we examine at a certain season the nest of a humble bee, we shall find the occupants in every stage of growth from the egg to the pupa, and even to the perfectly formed bee ready to break out of its larval cell. ”

“ In an insect, an energetic movement is equally necessary to strike the air at both beats up and down. In the bird, on the contrary, one active beat only is necessary, the down beat. It creates at that time all the motive force that will be dispensed during the entire revolution of the wing. ”

“ As illustrated so well by the history of the incursions of the army worm and canker worm, it is only by a combination between farmers and orchardists that these and other pests can be kept under. The matter can be best reached by legislation. We have fish and game laws; why should we not have an insect law? Why should we not frame a law providing that farmers, and all owning a garden or orchard, should cooperate in taking preventive measures against injurious insects, such as early or late planting of cereals, to avert the attacks of the wheat midge and Hessian fly ”

“ In his remarks "On the Origin of Insects," [27] Sir John Lubbock says, "I feel great difficulty in conceiving by what natural process an insect with a suctorial mouth like that of a gnat or butterfly could be developed from a powerfully mandibulate type like the Orthoptera, or even from the Neuroptera." Is it not more difficult to account for the origin of the mouth-parts at all? They are developed as tubercles or folds in the tegument, and are homologous with the legs. ”

“ The adult two-winged fly lays its eggs on the exterior of the animal to be infested. They are conveyed into the interior of the host, where they hatch, and the worm or maggot lives by sucking in the purulent matter, caused by the irritation set up by its presence in its host; or else the worm itself, after hatching, bores under the skin. When fully grown, it quits the body and finishes its transformations to the fly-state under ground. Many quadrupeds, from mice, squirrels, and rabbits, up to the ox, horse, and even the rhinoceros, suffer from their attacks, while man himself is not exempt. ”

“ Though the moths are easy to study compared with the bees, flies, beetles and bugs, and dragon flies, yet many questions of great interest in philosophical entomology have been answered by our knowledge of their structure and mode of growth. The great works of Herold on the evolution of a caterpillar; of Lyonet on the anatomy of the Cossus; of Newport on that of the Sphinx; and of Siebold on the parthenogenesis of insects, are proofs that the moths have engaged the attention of some of the master minds in science. ”

“ The labors of the Mason bees, and their allies, terminate after the cell is once constructed and filled with pollen. The eggs are then left to hatch, and the young care for themselves, though the adult bee shows greater skill in architecture than the Humble bee. It is thus throughout nature. Many forms, comparatively low in the scale of life, astonish us with certain characters or traits, reminding us of beings much superior, physically and intellectually. The lower forms constantly reach up and in some way ally themselves with creatures far more highly organized. ”

“ When we descend to the insects with an "incomplete" metamorphosis, as in the May fly, we find that, as in the case of Chloëon, Sir John Lubbock has described twenty-one stages of existence, and let him who can say where the larval ends and the pupal or imaginal stages begin. So in a stronger sense with the grasshopper and cockroach. The adult state in these insects is attained after a number of moults of the skin, during each of which the insect gradually draws nearer to the final winged form. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. CERTAIN PARASITIC INSECTS.
The subject of our discourse is not only a disagreeable but too often a painful one. Not only is the mere mention of the creature's name of which we are to speak tabooed and avoided by the refined and polite, but the creature itself has become extinct and banished from the society of the good and respectable. Indeed under such happy auspices do a large proportion of the civilized world now live that their knowledge of the habits and form of a louse may be represented by a blank. ”

“ The wings are moved by powerful muscles of flight, filling up the cavity of the thorax, just as the muscles are the largest about the thorax of a bird. Moreover in the bodies of insects that fly (such as the bee, cockchafer, and dragon fly) , as distinguished from those that creep exclusively, the air tubes (tracheæ) which ramify into every part of the body, are dilated here and there, especially in the base of the abdomen, into large sacs, which are filled with air when the insect is about to take flight, so that the specific gravity of the body is greatly diminished. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But whether true or unproved, the theory of evolution in some shape has actually been adopted by the large proportion of naturalists, who find it indispensable in their researches, and it will be used until found inadequate to explain facts. Notwithstanding the present distrust, and even fear, with which it is received by many, we doubt not but that in comparatively few years all will acknowledge that the theory of evolution will be to biology what the nebular hypothesis is to geology, or the atomic theory is to chemistry. ”

“ These are the injuries done by the more abundant kinds of insects injurious to crops. We should not forget that each fruit or shade tree, garden shrub or vegetable, has a host of insects peculiar to it, and which, year after year, renew their attacks. I could enumerate upwards of fifty species of insects which prey upon cereals and grass, and as many which infest our field crops. Some thirty well known species ravage our garden vegetables. There are nearly fifty species which attack the grape vine, and their number is rapidly increasing. ”

“ Thus the ovipositor of the bee has a history, and is not apparently a special creation, but a structure gradually developed to subserve the use of a defensive organ.
So the organs of special sense in insects are in most cases simply altered hairs. The hairs themselves are modified epithelial cells. The eyes of insects, simple and compound, are at first simply epithelial cells, modified for a special purpose, and even the egg is but a modified epithelial cell attached to the walls of the ovary, which in turn is morphologically but a gland. ”

“ We notice that at a certain period in the life of the embryo all agree in having the head large, and bearing from two to four pairs of mouth organs, resembling the legs; the thorax is merged in with the abdomen, and the general form of the embryo is ovate. Now this general embryonic form characterizes the larva of the mites, of the myriopods and of the true insects. ”

“ The Senses of Insects. The eyes of insects are sometimes so large as to envelop the head like an Elizabethan ruffle, and the creature's head, as in the common house fly, seems all eyes. And this is almost literally the case, as the two great staring eyes that almost meet on the top of the head to form one, are made up of myriads of simple eyes. Each facet or simple eye is provided with a nerve filament which branches off from the main optic nerve, so that but one impression of the object perceived is conveyed to the brain ”

“ But yet nature kindly, and as if by a special interposition, provides for its maintenance, and the humble naturalist can only exclaim, "God is great, and his ways mysterious," and go on studying and collecting facts, leaving to his successors the more difficult task, but greater joy of discovering the cause and reason of things that are but a puzzle to the philosophers of this day. ”