_Karabidion_ (Fig. 160), a genus found in some of the islands of the southern hemisphere, has the hind legs enormously thickened in the male. Some Phasmids, e.g. _Orxines zeuxis_, have the hind wings marked and coloured after the manner of butterflies or moths. _Lamponius laciniatus_ has an elaborately irregular outline, looking like a mass of moss, and some species of _Bacteria_ are so very slender that the linear body is scarcely equal in size to one of the legs it bears. Among the most interesting forms are the Insects for which the genera _Agathemera_ and _Anisomorpha_ (Fig. 161) have been established; they are remarkably broad and short, have the mesothorax but little elongated, with the tegmina attached to it in the form of two short, thick, leathery lobes; while the wings are seen as marks on the metanotum looking like a mere sculpture of the surface; these Insects {275}have quite the appearance of larval forms, and it is worthy of note that the elongation of the mesothorax, which is one of the most marked features of the Phasmidae, is in these forms only very slight. [Illustration: FIG. 162.—_Palophus centaurus._ Old Calabar. Half natural size. (After Westwood.[202])] {276}[Illustration: FIG. 163.—_Titanophasma fayoli._ Carboniferous formation at Commentry. × ⅕. (From Zittel.)] [Illustration: FIG. 164.—_Titanophasma fayoli_ (restoration). × ⅒.] Some Insects said to belong to the genera _Phasma_ and _Bacteria_ have been found in amber. A single Insect-fossil found in the Tertiary strata in North America has recently been referred by Scudder to the family, and even to a genus still existing in the New World—_Agathemera_; the fragment is, however, so defective, and the characteristic points of the Phasmidae are so little evident in it, that not much reliance can be placed on the determination. No Phasmid has been unearthed from Mesozoic strata, so that, with the exception of the fragment just mentioned, nothing that evidently belongs to the Phasmidae has been discovered older than the remains preserved in amber. In the Carboniferous layers of the Palaeozoic epoch there are found remains of gigantic Insects that may possibly be connected with our living Phasmidae. These fossils have been treated by Brongniart and Scudder as forming a distinct family called Protophasmidae. The first of these authors says[203] that our Phasmidae were represented in the Carboniferous {277}epoch by analogous types differing in the nature of the organs of flight: these ancient Insects were of larger size than their descendants, being 25 to 50 centimetres long, and as much as 70 in spread of wing. To this group are referred, on somewhat too inferential grounds, the fossil wings found in the Carboniferous layers, and called by Goldenberg _Dictyoneura_.