In all Insects fusion of the primitive elements of the head begins so early and is carried so far, that it is extremely difficult to discover the precise way in which they are fitted together. The following facts have been ascertained respecting the development of the parts in question. At a very early stage of embryonic life the body of the Insect becomes divided into a series of segments, which are at fewest fourteen (in some Diptera), while they are not known to exceed seventeen.[62] Each segment is normally provided with a pair of appendages. The foremost segment soon enlarges beyond the rest, and becomes divided by a median groove into two “procephalic lobes.”[63] Of the appendages the first eight pairs are usually more prominent than the rest, and of different form; those of the eighth segment, which may be altogether inconspicuous, never attain any functional importance. The first four pairs of appendages are budded off from the future head, while the next three pairs form the walking legs, and are carried upon the thoracic segments. All the existing appendages of the fore part of the body are thus accounted for, but the exact mode of formation of the head has not yet been made out. The chief part of its walls, including the clypeus, the compound eyes, and the epicranial plates, arise from the procephalic lobes, and represent the much altered segment of which the antennæ are the appendages. The labrum is a secondary outgrowth from this segment, and, in some cases at least, it originates as a pair of processes which resemble true appendages, though it is unlikely that such is their real character. No means at present exist for identifying the terga and sterna of the head, nor have the gena, the occipital frame, and the cervical sclerites (described below) been assigned to their segments.[64] It is worthy of notice that in the stalk-eyed Crustacea, the head, or what corresponds to the head of Insecta, consists of either five or six somites, taking into account a diversity of opinion with respect to the eyestalks, while only four pairs of appendages can be certainly traced in the head of the Insect. The mandibles and maxillæ exist to the same number in both groups, and are homologous organs, so far as is known; the numerical difference relates therefore to the antennæ, of which the Crustacean possesses two pairs, the Insect only one. Whether the pair deficient in the Insect is altogether undeveloped, or represented by the pair of prominences which give rise to the labrum,[65] is a question of much theoretical interest and of not a little difficulty. [62] Balfour, Embryology, Vol. I., p. 337. [63] Huxley, Med. Times and Gazette, 1856–7; Linn. Trans., Vol. XXII., p. 221, and pl. 38 (1858).