In all the remaining orders of the Endopterygota the larva is eruciform or vermiform. The Mecaptera, with their predominantly longitudinal wing-nervuration, serve as a link between the Neuroptera and the Trichoptera, their retention of small cerci being an archaic character which stamps them as synthetic in type, but does not necessarily remove them from orders which agree with them in most points of structure but which have lost the cerci. The standing of the Trichoptera in a position almost ancestral to the Lepidoptera is one of the assured results of recent morphological study, the mobile mandibulate pupa and the imperfectly suctorial maxillae of the Trichoptera reappearing in the lowest families of the Lepidoptera. This latter order, which is not certainly known to have existed before Tertiary times, has become the most highly specialized of all insects in the structure of the pupa. Diptera of the sub-order Orthorrhapha occur in the Lias and Cyclorrhapha in the Kimmeridgian. The order must therefore be ancient, and as no evidence is forthcoming as to the mode of reduction of the hind-wings, nor as to the stages by which the suctorial mouth-organs became specialized, it is difficult to trace the exact relationship of the group, but the presence of cerci and a degree of correspondence in the nervuration of the fore-wings suggest the Mecaptera as possible allies. There seems no doubt that the suctorial mouth-organs of the Diptera have arisen quite independently from those of the Lepidoptera, for in the former order the sucker is formed from the second maxillae, in the latter from the first. The eruciform larva of the Orthorrhapha leads on to the headless vermiform maggot of the Cyclorrhapha, and in the latter sub-order we find metamorphosis carried to its extreme point, the muscid flies being the most highly specialized of all the Hexapoda as regards structure, while their maggots are the most degraded of all insect larvae. The Siphonaptera appear by the form of the larva and the nature of the metamorphosis to be akin to the Orthorrhapha--in which division they have indeed been included by many students. They differ from the Diptera, however, in the general presence of palps to both pairs of maxillae, and in the absence of a hypopharynx, so it is possible that their relationship to the Diptera is less close than has been supposed. The affinities of the Hymenoptera afford another problem of much difficulty. They differ from other Endopterygota in the multiplication of their Malpighian tubes, and from all other Hexapoda in the union of the first abdominal segment with the thorax. Specialized as they are in form, development and habit, they retain mandibles for biting, and in their lower sub-order--the Symphyta--the maxillae are hardly more modified than those of the Orthoptera. From the evidence of fossils it seems that the higher sub-order--Apocrita--can be traced back to the Lias, so that we believe the Hymenoptera to be more ancient than the