If it should be objected that the wings so developed would be
rudimentary, and that there would be nothing to encourage their
development into perfect functional organs, we may remind the reader
that we have already pointed out that imperfect wings of Exopterygota
do, even at the present time under certain conditions, become perfect
organs; and we may also add that there are, even among existing
Endopterygota, species in which the wings are usually vestiges and yet
sometimes become perfectly developed. In fact, almost every condition
that is required for the change from exopterygotism to endopterygotism
exists among the insects that surround us.
But it may perhaps be considered improbable that organs like the wings,
having once been lost, should have been reacquired on the large scale
suggested by the theory just put forward. If so, there is an alternative
method by which the endopterygotous may have arisen from the
exopterygotous condition. The sub-imago of the Ephemeroptera suggests
that a moult, after the wings had become functional, was at one time
general among the Hexapoda, and that the resting nymph of the
Thysanoptera or the pupa of the Endopterygota represents a formerly
active stage in the life-history. Further, although the wing-rudiments
appear externally in an early instar of an exopterygotous insect, the
earliest instars are wingless and wing-rudiments have been previously
developing beneath the cuticle, growing however outwards, not inwards as
in the larva of an endopterygote. The change from an exopterygote to an
endopterygote development could, therefore, be brought about by the
gradual postponement to a later and later instar of the appearance of
the wing-rudiments outside the body, and their correlated growth inwards
as imaginal disks. For in the post-embryonic development of the
ancestors of the Endopterygota we may imagine two or three instars with
wing-rudiments to have existed, the last represented by the sub-imago of
the may-flies. As the life-conditions and feeding-habits of the larva
and imago become constantly more divergent, the appearance of the
wing-rudiments would be postponed to the pre-imaginal instar, and that
instar would become predominantly passive.
_Relationships of the Orders._--Reasons have been given for regarding
the Thysanura as representing, more nearly than any other living group,
the primitive stock of the Hexapoda. It is believed that insects of this
group are represented among Silurian fossils. We may conclude,
therefore, that they were preceded, in Cambrian times or earlier, by
Arthropods possessing well developed appendages on all the
trunk-segments. Of such Arthropods the living Symphyla--of which the
delicate little _Scutigerella_ is a fairly well-known example--give us
some representation.
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