Abstract
THE insects are unknown in their original or primitive manifestations and consequently their ancestry is wrapped in obscurity. The subject can only be approached by the co-ordination of whatever evidence may be gleaned from three principal courts of appeal?comparative morphology, embryology and palaeontology. Of these, paleontology has, so far, remained almost like a closed book: no annectant forms bearing directly upon the problem have been disclosed in the strata of any geological period. Without this necessary record of the past, the links in the evolutionary chain are deductions based mainly upon morphology and development. For a considerable time past, the two most plausible theories of insect descent have been those which involved either the Crustacea or Symphyla as ancestors. The Crustacean theory, which is based no external structure, is losing ground, while that involving the Symphyla has remained in much the same status that it acquired in the days of Packard.
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References
Ann. della Scuola Sup. di Agric. in Portici, 5 (1903); ibid., 6 (1905).
Packard, ” Text-book of Entomology”, 22 (1898).
Pap. Roy. Soc. Tasm., 1930; and NATURE, 126 (1930); this theory was partially recast in Amer. J. Sci., 30, 438 (1935).
J. Morph., 14, 239 (1898).
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Imms, A. The Ancestry of Insects. Nature 139, 399–400 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139399a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139399a0