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274
The Descent of Man.
Part II.

to be described in the next chapter, we may feel almost sure that the stridulation serves, as Westring also believes, to call or to excite the female; and this is the first case known to me in the ascending scale of the animal kingdom of sounds emitted for this purpose.[1]

Class, Myriapoda.—In neither of the two orders in this class, the millipedes and centipedes, can I find any well-marked instances of such sexual differences as more particularly concern us. In Glomeris limbata, however, and perhaps in some few other species, the males differ slightly in colour from the females; but this Glomeris is a highly variable species. In the males of the Diplopoda, the legs belonging either to one of the anterior or of the posterior segments of the body are modified into prehensile hooks which serve to secure the female. In some species of Iulus the tarsi of the male are furnished with membraneous suckers for the same purpose. As we shall see when we treat of Insects, it is a much more unusual circumstance, that it is the female in Lithobius, which is furnished with prehensile appendages at the extremity of her body for holding the male.[2]


CHAPTER X.

Secondary Sexual Characters of Insects.

Diversified structures possessed by the males for seizing the females—Differences between the sexes, of which the meaning is not understood—Difference in size between the sexes—Thysanura—Diptera—Hemiptera—Homoptera, musical powers possessed by the males alone—Orthoptera, musical instruments of the males, much diversified in structure; pugnacity; colours—Neuroptera, sexual differences in colour—Hymenoptera, pugnacity and colours—Coleoptera, colours; furnished with great horns, apparently as an ornament; battles; stridulating organs generally common to both sexes.

In the immense class of insects the sexes sometimes differ in their locomotive-organs, and often in their sense-organs, as in the pectinated and beautifully plumose antennæ of the males of many species. In Chloëon, one of the Ephemeræ, the male has great pillared eyes, of which the female is entirely destitute.[3] The ocelli are absent in the females of certain insects, as in the

  1. Hilgendorf, however, has lately called attention to an analogous structure in some of the higher crustaceans, which seems adapted to produce sound; see 'Zoological Record,' 1869, p. 603.
  2. Walckenaer et P. Gervais, 'Hist. Nat. des Insectes: Apteres,' tom. iv. 1847, pp. 17, 19, 68.
  3. Sir J. Lubbock, 'Transact. Linnean Soc.' vol. xxv. 1866, p. 484. With respect to the Mutillidæ see Westwood, 'Modern Class. of Insects,' vol. ii. p. 213.