The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-02-12
OLDEST OF ALL INSECTS.
THE HUMBLE COCKROACH KING OF
ALL HIS KIND.

There is doubtless many a good house
wife in this world who wonders, as she
chases about the kitchen and the pantry,
polxing into dark hooks and crannies, with
her pail of hot water or box of poison.
what the little pests called cocroaches
are here for anyway and what good they
do. These questions would be rather diff
ficult to answer, for, like most of natures
@scavengers-and they, or most Of their va
rieties, at least, have certainly been such
in the past-they have obtruded, in these
times of advanced sanitary arrangements
and modern improvements" where their
services might well be dispensed with.
But there is no doubt, however much we
may begrudge the little insects a few tiny,
warm creviees in our homes, or an occa-
sional burial place in our buildings and
cuisine at the summer hotel that, by all
recognized laws of priority, they have at
least as much right here as we have, for
their very, very great-grandsires were
settlers upon this earth many ages before
our progenitors were even thought Of
In Bible times their presence was far
more disagreeably felt than in our own,
both on account of the different and more
slovenly mode of living that prevailed
among those peoples and of the warm eli
mate of the countries of which the Bible
tells. And it is probable, although no dis
tinct mention is made of the cockroacn in
the scriptures as among the animals of
Noah, that 1t was, nevertheless, in the
very vanguard of the procession that so
placidly wendell its way into the ark
Even the first of her kind, the wife of
Adam, was unquestionably acquainted
with the little six-footed creatures But
q bnr l11n &c
dame and was as little troubled with
household cares and victuals as she was
with fashion, and it is likely that the fact
OF their existence did not weigh heavily
upon her mind.
The antiquity of the cockroach. how
ever, is not reckoned by the thousands of
years with which we commonly compute
our vast stretches of historic time but by
the millions and millions upon millions
Its beginning takes us back through mis-
~ and unfabied ages, past the epochs of
the gigantic mastodon and the tremsn-
dous glaciers that swept over the north
western part of this land to disappear
beneath a warmer southern sun; past the
epoch of the huge and horrible reptiles
that wandered over the universal marsh
lands and boys, and fitted through the
air with their strange, tapping wings, like
the fiends in Dante's "Inferno;" past the
long period of the luxuriant solitudes of
the carboniferous forests, when the great
forces of nature were at work storing
away the rich beds of coal into which we
delVe to-day; past the time when whales
and giant sharks and sea monsters dashed
the waters into foam, the monarchs of the
oceans. Their origin carries us back to
the very commencement of things They
were one of the earliest of the forms of
life and the pioneers of insect life. As
some one has said '"They are the true
aristocrats of insects the kings of their
kind.
Learned savants and researchers tell US
that the most primitive of cockroaches are
found deep down in what are known as the
silurian rocks, which were formed such
countless ages ago that they don't attempt
to count them at all. They were not very
unlike their lneal descendants of to-day,
the principal difference being as TO their
wings, and it is probable that should one
of these ancient creatures be in some way
| resurrected and go Scurrying across the
| kitchen floor it would be stepped on with
as little thought and comDunction as are
| its modern kindred As these wings consti-
| tute the chief and often the only means of
| studying their specieS-the bodies having
in most cases been wholly dissolved by
! putrefaction--it is, perhaps, worthy of note
| that their DEVELOPMENT was more perfect
| than in the present varietes-exceptlng the
| hind or under wings, which are almost
| identical-and that they are preserved in
| the fossils to the minutest reticulation of
the membrane.
| With the lapse of ages the forms and
! shape Of the wings gradually underwent a
| change, or, rather, a series of changes, as
well as the size of the body, and the origi-
nal family, spread out into multitude of
| species. 1t has always been law of ma
| ture that all forms of life shall advance
from simple uniformity TO a complex di-
versty or from homogeneity to heterogen-
a4f L. 49, -.
! less than GOD species existing prior to the
| tertiary epoch, when the first mammal life
| was introduced into the world, have been
| thus far discovered and described many
| Of them being found in the coal measures
Of Pennsylvania and West Virginia The
investigations of late years have demon
strated In fact, that America, as Is South
America to-day, was the most fruitful OF
any part Of the globe, both in its varieties
| and its numbers. When we remember that
! there are at present from seven to eight
| hundred species, that their numbers have
been steadily decreasing for some millions
| of years. and that their kind once com
prised one-half Of the ancient or paleozoic
| insects, we can form some vague conceD-
ton of the proportions OF our cockroach
population of the past.
| The cockroach of modern times Is COM
| monty smaller than it's progenies but be-
| ing of the same rowing habits and inquis-
| tive nature, has become famous travel
,er in these days of worldwide commerce
| and communications. In the old days
not to speak of the present days-the ships
were overrun with them, as well as with
| great hordes of rats, and, as they touched
| at this port and that on their trading voy-
| ages, there occurred widespread scat
| tering of species that has been a source OF
| never-ending regret and tribulation to
| their involuntary hosts. 1t was in this
| manner that the "black beetle" or cock
roach, is supposed to have been brought
to this country and to Europe from the
East Indies. Many kinds have been car
ried from the West indies and from Brazil
to all parts of the world, and from the
island of Madeira to Brazil, in turn, and
the reddish American roach, which some
how finds its way into the best regulated