The Life-Story of Insects | Page 3

with eggs of small size, with aquatic habit, and with relatively low zoological rank. The young of a starfish, for example, has hardly a character in common with its parent, while a marine segmented worm and an oyster, unlike enough when adult, develop from closely similar larval forms. If we take a class of animals, the Crustacea, nearly allied to insects, we find that its more lowly members, such as 'water-fleas' and barnacles, pass through far more striking changes than its higher groups, such as lobsters and woodlice. But among the Insects, a class of predominantly terrestrial and aerial creatures producing large eggs, the highest groups undergo, as we shall see, the most profound changes. The life-story of the butterfly, then, well-known as it may be, furnishes a puzzling exception to some wide-reaching generalisations concerning animal development. And the student of science often finds that an exception to some rule is the key to a problem of the highest interest.
During many centuries naturalists have bent their energies to explain the difficulties presented by insect transformations. Aristotle, the first serious student of organised beings whose writings have been preserved for us, and William Harvey, the famous demonstrator of the mammalian blood circulation two thousand years later, agreed in regarding the pupa as a second egg. The egg laid by a butterfly had not, according to Harvey, enough store of food to provide for the building-up of a complex organism like the parent; only the imperfect larva could be produced from it. The larva was regarded as feeding voraciously for the purpose of acquiring a large store of nutritive material, after which it was believed to revert to the state of a second but far larger egg, the pupa, from which the winged insect could take origin. Others again, following de Réaumur (1734), have speculated whether the development of pupa within larva, and of winged insect within pupa might not be explained as abnormal births. But a comparison of the transformation of butterflies with simpler insect life-stories will convince the enquirer that no such heroic theories as these are necessary. It will be realised that even the most profound transformation among insects can be explained as a special case of growth.
CHAPTER II
GROWTH AND CHANGE
The caterpillar differs markedly from the butterfly. As we pursue our studies of insect growth and transformation we shall find that in some cases the difference between young and adult is much greater--as for example between the maggot and the house-fly, in others far less--as between the young and full-grown grasshopper or plant-bug. It is evidently wise to begin a general survey of the subject with some of those simpler cases in which the differences between the young and adult insect are comparatively slight. We shall then be in a position to understand better the meaning of the more puzzling and complex cases in which the differences between the stages are profound.
In the first place it is necessary to realise that the changes which any insect passes through during its life-story are essentially accompaniments of its growth. The limits of this little book allow only slight reference to features of internal structure; we must be content, in the main, to deal with the outward form. But there is an important relation between this outward form and the underlying living tissues which must be clearly understood. Throughout the great race of animals--the Arthropoda--of which insects form a class, the body is covered outwardly by a cuticle or secretion of the underlying layer of living cells which form the outer skin or _epidermis_[3] (see fig. 10 ep, cu, p. 39). This cuticle has regions which are hard and firm, forming an exoskeleton, and, between these, areas which are relatively soft and flexible. The firm regions are commonly segmental in their arrangement, and the intervening flexible connections render possible accurate motions of the exoskeletal parts in relation to each other, the motions being due to the contraction of muscles which are attached within the exoskeleton.
[3] The term 'hypodermis' frequently applied to this layer is misleading. The layer is the true outer skin--ectoderm or epidermis.
Now this jointed exoskeleton--an admirably formed suit of armour though it often is--has one drawback: it is not part of the insect's living tissues. It is a cuticle formed by the solidifying of a fluid secreted by the epidermal cells, therefore without life, without the power of growth, and with only a limited capacity for stretching. It follows, therefore, that at least during the period through which the insect continues to grow, the cuticle must be periodically shed. Thus in the life-story of an insect or other arthropod, such as a lobster, a spider, or a centipede, there must be a succession of cuticle-castings--'moults' or ecdyses as they are often called.
When such a moult is about to take place