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 — John Shaqi
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
In respect to the nervous system, there are no diagnostic characters;
there are, however, not as many as two pairs of ganglia to a segment.
The brain is well developed, sending a pair of slender nerves to the
small eyes. The ganglia of the segment bearing the first pair of legs is
fused with the subœsophageal ganglion. Grassi was unable to detect a
true sympathetic system, but he suspects the existence of a very small
frontal ganglion.
The slender dorsal vessel, provided with ostia and valvules, pulsates
along the entire length of the trunk; an aorta passes into the head.
The internal genital organs of both sexes are paired, and extend along
the greater part of the trunk; in either sex they may be compared to two
long, slender, straight cords extending from the fourth to the tenth
pair of legs. The two oviducts do not unite before reaching the sexual
opening (Fig. 15, _ovd_).
The male sexual organs are more complicated than the feminine. The
paired testicular tubes lie in trunk-segments 6 to 12, on each side, and
partly under the intestinal canal, communicating with each other by a
cross-anastomosis situated under the intestine, and which, like the
testes, is filled with sperm. Of the paired seminal ducts (vas deferens)
in trunk-segment 4, each unites again into a thick tube, sending a blind
tube forward into the third segment. Under the place of union of the two
vasa deferentia arise the paired ductus ejaculatorii, which open beneath
in the uterus masculinus. The anterior blind ends of the vasa deferentia
form a sort of small paired vesiculæ seminales in which a great quantity
of ripe sperm is stored. The uterus masculinus is in its structure
homologous with the evaginable penis of Pauropus, Polyxenus, and some
diplopods, and the sexual opening has without doubt become secondarily
unpaired. The sexual opening is rather long and is closed by two
longitudinal folds. “In several respects the male sexual organs of
Scolopendrella are like those of Pauropus; in the last-named form we
have indeed an unpaired testis, but also in Scolopendrella we see the
beginning of such a singleness; namely, the presence of an anastomosis
uniting the two tubes, their communication by means of a transverse
connecting canal and a glandular structure in the epithelium forming
them. The male sexual organs of Pauropus differ only through a still
greater complication.” (Schmidt.)
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