The Origin of Insects

Abstract

IN an article by Dr. Beale, in your number for Nov. 23, on “One of the Greatest Difficulties of Darwinism,” a most extraordinary misconception is stated to be a difficulty. That the pupa state is a modification of the ordinary process of skin-shedding in the Insecta is proved by so many facts, that one cannot understand for a moment how it can possibly be denied, much less how its denial can be made use of as an argument against the doctrine of evolution. Sir John Lubbock pointed out long ago that, in the development of the Insecta, every grade of modification exists between those insects which are gradually developed, each successive ecdysis producing, only the slightest possible modifications, and those which undergo a change so complete that it may be likened to the process of metagenesis, as it has been called, which takes place in the Echinodermata.