A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working EntomologistPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Science
A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working Entomologist
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Insects
FIG. 225.—Portion of a longitudinal section through a pupal wing about
eight days before emergence: _s_, formative scale-cell; upper _s_, a
scale.
]
More recently Schaeffer has stated that the scales and also the hairs
are evaginations of greatly enlarged hypodermis cells, and still more
complete evidence has been afforded by A. G. Mayer (1896). In the wings
of Lepidoptera, about three weeks before the imago emerges, certain of
the hypodermis cells, which occur at regular intervals, begin to
increase in size and to project slightly above the level of the
hypodermis; these are Semper’s “formative cells,” and are destined to
secrete the scales. They increase in length, and appear as in Fig. 223.
In the next stage observed, the projections are much longer (Fig. 224).
The hypodermis is now thrown up into a regular series of ridges, which
run across the wing. Each ridge, says Mayer, corresponds in position
with a row of formative cells, and each furrow with the interval between
two adjacent rows. The scales always project from the tops of these
ridges. The ground or basal membrane has not participated in this
folding, and the deep processes of the hypodermis (_prc_) that once
extended to this membrane have largely disappeared. Figure 225
represents a more advanced stage almost eight days before the emergence
of the imago.
The scales are originally filled with protoplasm, which gradually
withdraws, leaving behind it little chitinous bars or pillars which
serve to bind together the upper and lower surfaces of the scales, and
finally the scales become “merely little flattened hollow sacs
containing only air.” As Mayer shows (Figs. 226, 227), from the study of
scales examined four days before emergence of the butterfly (Danais),
“the striations upon the upper surface of the scale are due to a series
of parallel longitudinal ridges,” while the under side is usually
smooth.
The mode of insertion is seen in Fig. 227. The narrow cylindrical
pedicel of the scale is merely, according to Semper, inserted into a
minute close-fitting socket, which perforates the wing-membrane, and not
into a tube, as Landois supposed. Spuler describes a sort of double sac
structure or follicle (_Schuppenbalg)_ which receives the hollow pedicel
of the scale. This was originally (1860) observed by F. J. Carl Mayer,
but more fully examined by Spuler (Fig. 228) though not detected by A.
G. Mayer.
[Illustration:
FIG. 226.—Portion of a cross-section through the pupal wing of _Danais
plexippus_, about six days before emergence: _sg_, scale; _cta.al_,
wing-membrane; _cl.frm_, formative cell of the scale; _mbr.pr_,
ground-membrane; _fbr.h′drm_, hypodermal fibres of pupal wings. _A_,
portion of a longitudinal section through the pupal wing, eight or
nine days before emergence; _prc_, processes of young hypodermis
scales.—This and Figs. 223–225 after Mayer.
]
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