No indications beyond those furnished by comparative anatomy help us to unravel the phylogeny of the Collembola. In most respects, the shortened abdomen, for example, they are more specialized than the Thysanura, and most of the features in which they appear to be simple, such as the absence of a tracheal system and of compound eyes, can be explained as the result of degradation. In their insunken mouth and their jaws retracted within the head-capsule, the Collembola resemble the entotrophous division of the Thysanura (see APTERA), from which they are probably descended. From the thysanuroid stock of the Apterygota, the Exopterygota took their rise. We have undoubted fossil evidence that winged insects lived in the Devonian and became numerous in the Carboniferous period. These ancient Exopterygota were synthetic in type, and included insects that may, with probability, be regarded as ancestral to most of the existing orders. It is hard to arrange the Exopterygota in a linear series, for some of the orders that are remarkably primitive in some respects are rather highly specialized in others. As regards wing-structure, the Isoptera with the two pairs closely similar are the most primitive of all winged insects; while in the paired mesodermal genital ducts, the elongate cerci and the conspicuous maxillulae of their larvae the Ephemeroptera retain notable ancestral characters. But the vestigial jaws, numerous Malpighian tubes, and specialized wings of may-flies forbid us to consider the order as on the whole primitive. So the Dermaptera, which retain distinct maxillulae and have no ectodermal genital ducts, have either specialized or aborted wings and a large number of Malpighian tubes. The Corrodentia retain vestigial maxillulae and two pairs of Malpighian tubes, but the wings are somewhat specialized in the Copeognatha and absent in the degraded and parasitic Mallophaga. The Plecoptera and Orthoptera agree in their numerous Malpighian tubes and in the development of a folding anal area in the hind-wing. As shown by the number and variety of species, the Orthoptera are the most dominant order of this group. Eminently terrestrial in habit, the differentiation of their fore-wings and hind-wings can be traced from Carboniferous, isopteroid ancestors through intermediate Mesozoic forms. The Plecoptera resemble the Ephemeroptera and Odonata in the aquatic habits of their larvae, and by the occasional presence of tufted thoracic gills in the imago exhibit an aquatic character unknown in any other winged insects. The Odonata are in many imaginal and larval characters highly specialized; yet they probably arose with the Ephemeroptera as a divergent offshoot of the same primitive isopteroid stock which developed more directly into the living Isoptera, Plecoptera, Dermaptera and Orthoptera.