LETTER XXXI.

_STATES OF INSECTS._

PUPA STATE.

We have now traced our little animals through their egg and larva states, and have arrived at the third stage of their existence, _the Pupa State_. This, to include all, can only be defined,--that state intervening between the larva and imago, in which the parts and organs of the perfect insect, particularly those of sex, though in few cases fully developed, are prepared and fitted for their final and complete development in the last-mentioned state; and in which the majority of these animals are incapable of locomotion, or of taking food.

Pupæ, like larvæ, may be separated into two great divisions:--

I. Those which, in general form, more or less resemble the larvæ from which they have proceeded.

II. Those which are wholly unlike the larvæ from which they have proceeded.

I. To the first division belong, with some exceptions[562], the _Dermaptera_, _Orthoptera_, _Hemiptera_, and most _Aptera_, with the neuropterous tribes of _Libellulina_, _Ephemerina_, and the genus _Termes_, in the class _Insecta_; and the majority of the _Arachnida_. This, like the first division of larvæ, may be subdivided into two corresponding smaller sections; the first including those pupæ which resemble the larvæ, except in the relative proportion and number of some of their parts; and the second those that resemble them, except in having the rudiments of wings, or of wings and elytra.