Fig. 159.—Calvisia atrosignata, female. Tenasserim. (After Brunner.)
Although the number of species of Phasmidae is small in comparison with what we find in many of the large families of Insecta, yet there is probably no other family that equals it in multiplicity of form and diversity of external appearance.
Fig. 160.—Eurycantha (Karabidion) australis, male. Lord Howe's Island. (After Westwood.)
Fig. 161.—Anisomorpha pardalina. Chili. (After Westwood.)
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 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.
Fig. 162.—Palophus centaurus. Old Calabar. Half natural size. (After Westwood.[[202]])
