In the meantime, then, we may not trust to appearances. As their development indeed teaches us, the wings as well as the additional members must be regarded as actual evaginations of the common sockets of the body, and in order especially to refute the prevalent opinion that these wing-membranes are void of sensation, it should be remembered that Leydig has proved the existence, as well as one can be convinced by experiment, of a nerve-end apparatus in certain basal or radical veins of the wing-membrane, which is very extensive and complicated, and therefore indicates the performance of an important function, perhaps of a kind of balancing sense, and also that these same insect wings, with their delicate membrane, are very easily affected by different outside agents, as, for instance, warmth, currents of air, etc. Usually in their inactive or passive state the wings are held off horizontally from the body during flight, and are laid upon the back again when the insect alights; but an exception occurs in most butterflies and Neuroptera, among which the wing-joint allows only one movement round the oblique and long axis of the wings. From this cause, too, the insects just mentioned can unfold their wings suddenly. [Illustration: FIG. 169.—Anterior part of a Cicada for demonstrating the mechanism of the articulation of the fore wing: _a_, articular head; _b_, articular pan, frog, or cotyla; _g_, elastic band; _c_, _d_, _e_, system of elastic rods; _r__{1}, _r__{2}, 1st and 2d abdominal segments. _HF_, hind wings.—After Graber. ] The transition of the wings from the active to the resting condition seems to be by way of a purely passive process, which, therefore, usually gives no trouble to the insect. The wing being extended by the tractive power of the muscles, flies back, when this ceases, to its former or resting posture by means of its natural elasticity, like a spiral spring disturbed from its balance. The structure of this spring joint is very different, however. It usually consists (Fig. 169) of two parts. The wing can move itself up and down in a vertical plane by means of the forward joint, and at the same time can rotate somewhat round its long axis, because the chitinous part mentioned above is ground off after the fashion of a mandrel.