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
The hypodermal colors are mostly brighter and lighter than the dermal
ones, being light blue or green in different shades, yellow to orange,
and the numerous shades of these colors combined with white;
exceptionally they are metallic, as in Cassida, and are then obliterated
after death.
“The fact that such metallic colors can be retained in dead
specimens by putting a drop of glycerine under the elytra, leads us
to conclude that those colors are based upon fat substances. The
hypodermal colors are never glossy, as far as I know; the dermal
colors frequently.
“As the wings, elytra, and hairs all possess a cuticula, dermal
colors are frequently to be found, together with hypodermal ones,
chiefly in metallic colors. In the same place both colors may be
present, or one of them alone. So we find hypodermal colors in the
elytra of Lampyridæ. In the elytra of the Cicindelidæ the main
metallic color is dermal, the white lines or spots are hypodermal,
by which arrangement the variability in size and shape of those
spots is explained.
“There occur in a number of insects external colors, that is, colors
upon the cuticula, which I consider to be in fact displaced
hypodermal colors: the mealy pale blue or white upon the abdomen of
some Odonata, the white on many Hemiptera, the pale gray on the
elytra and on the thorax of the Goliath beetle, and the yellowish
powder on Lixus. Some of these colors dissolve easily by ether or
melt in heat, and some of them are a kind of wax. I believe that
those colors are produced in the hypodermis, and are exuded through
the pore-canals.” (Hagen.)
The white colors are simply for the most part due to the inclusion of
air in scales. The white mother-of-pearl spots of Argynnis are produced
by a system of fine transverse pore-canals filled with air; in
Hydrometra the white ventral marks have the same origin. (Leydig.)
The further statements and criticisms of Hagen regarding the relation of
color to mimicry, sexual selection, and the origin of patterns are of
much weight and will be referred to under those heads. Indeed, these
subjects cannot well be discussed without reference to the fundamental
facts stated in the masterly papers of Leydig and of Hagen, and much of
the theorizing of these latter days is ill-founded, because the colors
of insects and animals are attributed to natural selection, when they
seem really the result of the action of the primary factors of organic
evolution, such as changes of light, heat, cold, and chemical processes
dependent on the former.
As to the chemical nature of color, Hagen, after quoting the results of
Krukenberg and others, thinks that the colors of insects are chemically
produced by a combination of fats or fat-acids with other acids or
alkalis under the influence of air, light, and heat. He concludes:—
1. That some colors of insects can be changed or obliterated by acids.
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