Our Common Insects: A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and HousesPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Science
Our Common Insects: A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and Houses
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Insects
Our common American species of Campodea (C. Americana) lives under
stones in damp places. It is yellowish, about a sixth of an inch in
length, is very agile in its movements, and would easily be mistaken for
a very young Lithobius. A larger species and differing in having longer
antennae, has been found by Mr. C. Cooke in Mammoth Cave, and has been
described in the "American Naturalist" under the name of Campodea
Cookei. Haliday has remarked that this family bears much resemblance to
the Neuropterous larva of Perla (Fig. 155), as previously remarked by
Gervais; and the many points of resemblance of this family and the
Lepismidae to the larval forms of some Neuroptera that are active in the
pupa state (the Pseudoneuroptera of Erichson and other authors) are very
striking. Campodea resembles the earliest larval form of Chloeon, as
figured by Sir John Lubbock, even to the single jointed tarsus; and why
these two Thysanurous families should be removed from the Neuroptera we
are unable, at present, to understand, as to our mind they scarcely
diverge from the Neuropterous type more than the Mallophaga, or biting
lice, from the type of Hemiptera.
Haliday, remarking on the opinion of Linnaeus and Schrank, who referred
Campodea to the old genus Podura, says with much truth, "it may be
perhaps no unfair inference to draw, that the insect in question is in
some measure intermediate between both," _i. e._, Podura and Lepisma.
This is seen especially in the mouth-parts which are withdrawn into the
head, and become very rudimentary, affording a gradual passage into the
mouth-parts of the Poduridae, which we now describe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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