Abstract
WITHIN a very few days after my last article on the “Origin and Metamorphoses of Insects” appeared in NATURE, I received from Mr. Packard a memoir,* under the above title, in which he developes his latest views on the same subject; and I am happy to find that his views do not differ so much from mine as I had supposed. He lays great stress, as is natural, on the larval forms. “If we compare,” he says, “these early stages of mites and myriopods, and those of the true six-footed insects, as in the larval Meloë, Cicada, Thrips, and Dagon-fly, we shall see quite plainly that they all share a common form. What does this mean? To the systematist who concerns himself with the classification of the myriads of different insects now living, it is a relief to find that all can be reduced to the comparatively simple forms sketched above. It is to him a proof of the unity of organisation pervading the world of insects. He sees how Nature, seizing upon this archetypal form has, by simple modifications of parts here and there, by the addition of wings and other organs wanting in these simple creatures, rung numberless changes in this elemental form” And again (p. 15t), “Going back to 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 pervades all.”
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
LUBBOCK, J. The Ancestry of Insects . Nature 8, 249–250 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/008249a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/008249a0