[Illustration: FIG. 153.—_Cyphocrania aestuans_; individual in which the right front leg has been renewed. Senegal. (After Westwood.)] We have pointed out that the tegmina or upper wings are usually of small size or absent (Fig. 150, _Aschipasma catadromus_), even in the species where the lower wings are very largely developed; in such cases the latter organs are folded in a complicated, fan-like manner, and repose on the back, looking as if they were really the tegmina (Fig. 159, _Calvisia atrosignata_); this appearance, moreover, is in some species enhanced much by the fact that the part of the wing which is outermost in the folded state is quite differently {267}coloured from the rest of the organ. The colour of the body in many Phasmidae is said to be very variable, and if the tints be owing to chlorophyll or other plant juices, finding their way amongst the Insect-tissues, this is readily understood; in _Diapheromera_ the young Insect is brownish on hatching, becomes green after feeding, and turns brown again when the leaves do so. The ocelli, too, are said to be very variable, and M‘Coy goes so far as to state[194] that they may be either present or absent in different individuals though of the same species and sex,—a statement so remarkable as to require minute examination, though it is to some extent confirmed by the remarks of other entomologists. [Illustration: FIG. 154.—_Phyllium scythe_, female. Sylhet. (After Westwood.)] The resemblance presented by different kinds of Orthoptera to leaves is so remarkable that it has attracted attention even in countries where Natural History is almost totally neglected; in many such places the inhabitants are firmly convinced that the Insects are truly transformed leaves, by which they understand a bud developing into a leaf and subsequently becoming a walking-leaf or Insect. To them the change is a kind of metamorphosis of habit; it grew as a leaf and then took to walking.[195] It is usually the tegmina that display this great resemblance to vegetable structures, and there is perhaps no case in which the phenomenon is more marked than it is in the genus _Phyllium_, the members of which occur only in the tropical regions of the Old World, where they extend from Mauritius and the Seychelles to the Fiji Islands—possibly even more to the East—and have, it would appear, a peculiar penchant for insular life. {268}[Illustration: FIG. 155.—_Phyllium scythe_, male. Sylhet. (After Murray.)]