MITES AND TICKS
Mites and ticks are classified with the spiders as degenerate relatives of arachnoid stock. Ticks are large enough to be seen without a magnifying glass, and some become half an inch long. Ticks are wholly parasitic. The female lays several thousand eggs at one time on the ground or just beneath the surface. "The young 'seed ticks' that hatch from these in a few days soon crawl up on some near-by blade of grass, or on a bush or shrub, and wait quietly until some animal comes along. If the animal comes close enough they leave the grass or other support and cling to their new-found host." These parasites are the agents of the spread of several infectious diseases of cattle, the worst of which is the destructive Texas fever, and of mankind, as spotted fever and other ills resulting from the presence of blood parasites.
[CHAPTER XI]
FROM BUTTERFLIES TO BEETLES AND BEES
The generally accepted classification of the insects divides them into more than twenty orders, and these into hundreds of families whose species, already catalogued, are three times as numerous as all other known animals together. "There are, for example," as Lutz remarks, "15,000 species of insects to be found within fifty miles of New York City; more than 2,000 of these are either moths or butterflies."
Insects as a class are characterized primarily by the division of the body, when adult, into three clearly defined regions—the head, the thorax or fore body, and the abdomen or hind body. All insects have three pairs of legs, distinguishing them from the eight-legged spiders, and from the many-footed myriapods and other arthropods, and most of them have one or two pairs of wings, borne like the legs on the thorax, the abdomen never bearing either. The head consists of four segments, but in most cases the first three are consolidated into the hindmost, and are represented only by the appendages they bear. The foremost of these are the mouth organs, of which there are three pairs: the most anterior are the mandibles, next the maxillæ, and then the labium, the two latter bearing articulated prolongations known respectively as maxillar and labial palpi. The mouth has an upper lip (labrum) and contains a tongue. These mouth parts are variously modified, and by these modifications insects may be classified in two groups: "First, those in which the jaws and maxillæ are free, adapted for biting, as in the locust or grasshopper; and second, those in which the jaws and maxillæ are more or less modified to suck up or lap up liquid food, as in the butterfly, bee, and bug." It is in this latter group that we find those having those interesting relations with plants that result in cross-fertilization of flowers.
| A FLORIDA KATYDID |
| (Cyrtophyllus floridensis) |
From the forehead spring a pair of antennæ, which are not only "feelers," but the bearers of other senses. They are jointed, and exceedingly various in form and service. Some are mere stubs, others long and slender as a whiplash, or they may be thickened at the end, as commonly in butterflies, or bear rows of hairs on each side, giving them in some cases a beautiful plumelike appearance. With their antennæ insects inspect by touch whatever they come in contact with, and test the shape of what they may be constructing, such as cells for their eggs. They recognize one another, and apparently exchange communications, or become aware of a stranger, and the ants induce their captive aphids to let down the honeydew by stroking them with their antennæ; but in many of these cases, if not all, additional information is derived through the antennæ by reason of the senses of hearing and of smell which many of them certainly possess. Ears, or organs sensitive to vibrations, and delicate hairs and other processes connected with nerves responding to touch are found in various other parts of insects' bodies, but the feelers are preeminently the seat of the sense of smell.
The eyes of insects are of two kinds, simple and compound. The simple eyes are small and practically useless single ones (ocelli) situated in a triangle of three on the top of the head. The compound eyes are on the side of the head, and are covered by a transparent layer of the chitinous skin (cornea), divided by delicate lines into square areas (facets). Beneath each facet of the cornea is an "ommatidium," optically separated from its neighbors by black pigment, and consisting of an outer segment or "vitreous body" and an inner segment or "retinula" formed of sensory cells. In some such eyes the ommatidia are few, but in others extremely numerous, so that the eyes cover a large space; some hawk moths are said to have 27,000 facets. The nature of the picture conveyed to the mind by such an eye has aroused much discussion. Photographs taken through the eye of a dragon fly show that, though the eye is compounded of many lenses and sensitive areas (retinulæ) corresponding to them, yet the whole eye throws one image on the retina. However complex such an eye may be, it is devoid of any focusing arrangement and can only receive a clear image when the retina and the object are separated by the focal length of the lenses. Hence the need for active movement on the part of creatures having them.
The head is connected with the thorax by a neck often protected by the overlapping front of the "tergum," or chitinous plate that covers the thorax. The thorax consists of three segments, named from the front backward "prothorax," "mesothorax," and "metathorax." These and a few other technical terms are in such constant use in describing insects that it is important to know them. The under (ventral) surface of the thorax is protected by another plate named "sternum." The armor is not continuous all around the body as in the crustaceans, but that on the upper surface is connected with the sternum by a seam of soft skin along the sides of the body.
Each segment of the thorax bears a pair of legs, each of which consists of a stout, flattened "coxa," nearest the body; a small second part, the "trochanter"; a third, the "femur"; a fourth, the "tibia"; and finally the "tarsus," or foot, terminating in a pair of claws, bristly on their under surface to give adhesive power. It is by means of these stiff hairs, and not by any suction or stickiness, that flies are able to walk on the ceiling and on vertical surfaces.
The wings of such insects as fly arise from the tergum of the thorax, and are in two pairs except in the flies, where there is but one, the hinder pair being represented by two little protuberances called "halteres." Usually the wings are strengthened by rods called "veins," and the patterns of venation vary in different groups, and form one of the means of classification.
The abdomen consists normally of ten segments, and contains most of the digestive and all of the reproductive organs, above which runs the main blood vessel, and below it the highly organized nervous system, the chief ganglion of which, in the head, is termed "brain."
The breathing of insects, although rhythmical in its inhalation and alternate exhalation, is not to the same purpose as ours. Respiration goes on by means of a system of branching tubes (tracheæ) that ramify throughout the body, and to which air is admitted through nine or more openings in the side of the body guarded by valves called "spiracles." The buzzing of flies, "singing" of mosquitoes, and the like, are sounds made in these spiracles, not by their rapid wings. At intervals the tracheæ are enormously enlarged to form air sacs. These no doubt, lighten the body, but they probably serve also to provide a reservoir of air from which the fine branches are filled by diffusion, and into which the carbon dioxide is discharged. The circulation of oxygen in adult insects, however, is never by means of the blood, but simply by absorption by the tissues into which the excessively attenuated tracheal tubes penetrate.
Insects are bisexual, and male and female are always separate individuals. Except in a few abnormal cases among the most lowly, eggs are produced and deposited in some favorable place for hatching.