Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
This state of partial immersion continues for half an hour or more.
During this time, and even when the insect is roaming up and down the
grass or twig, the posterior segments of the abdomen are extended at
intervals, the abdomen turning upward at the same time. It is a kind of
reaching-up movement, but whether this action accompanies a discharge
of fluid or is an attempt at reaching for air I have not ascertained.
Suddenly the insect begins to make bubbles by turning its tail out of
the fluid, opening the posterior segment, which appears like claspers,
and grasping a moiety of air, then turning the tail down into the fluid
and instantly allowing the inclosed air to escape (Fig. 3). These
movements go on at the rate of seventy or eighty times a minute. At the
outset the tail is moved alternately to the right and left in perfect
rhythm, so that the bubbles are distributed on both sides of the body,
and these are crowded toward the head till the entire fluid is filled
with bubbles, and the froth thus made runs over the back and around the
stem (Fig. 4).
Even when partially buried in these bubbles the tail is oscillated to
the right and left, though when completely immersed the tail is only
occasionally thrust out for air which is allowed to escape in the mass
apparently without the right-and-left movement, though of this I am not
sure. It is interesting to observe that in half a minute some thirty or
forty bubbles are made in this way--a bulk of air two or three times
exceeding the bulk of the body--without the slightest diminution in the
size of the body.
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