The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1899-08-08


a few plants will escape and grow, prob
ably the seed come from some other
farm that is not so closely watched. Mr..
Grant says a horse with white nose,
pasturing in field where it grows, will
soon have his nose get scabby from the
weed.
Our entomologist, A. McGregor, read
the very instructive paper on "What is
an Insectp
WHAT is AN INsEcTl
Since insects comprise four-ffths ofthe
animal kingdom it is proper to deter
mine what an insect is.
Although insects include several hun
dred thousand living species, common
plan of structure is seen through them
all. All insects are formed in rings, or
segments, arranged in succession and
rendered more or less hard. Their
bodies are arranged in three parts--the
head, thorax, or middle body, and abdo-
men.
The bee, moth, beetle or dragoon fly
are six-footed insects, and in the head
are four rings, in the thorax three and
in the abdomen ten or eleven. Ofcourse,
these rings are the frame of the animal
and formed early in embryonic life. To
the three rings of the thorax are at
tached pair of legs and generally pair
of wings to the first and second rings.
The abdomen contains the ovipositor
and in some as the bees and wasps has a
string.
OF course, there are variations, the
spiders, for instance, have no antenna,
but have an extra pair of long legs that
''feel along the line" They also want
the maxillae, or labium. The cent?
pedes or myriopods, also differ, having
an indefinite number of abdominal rings,
each having pair of legs. Internally
these have a nervous cord, with two
chains of swellings or nerve knots rest
ing on the underside of the body, and the
heart, or dorsal vessel, just under the
skin of the back, pulsates about as often
as our own heart If the insects are
alarmed the beats become more rapid as
in all animals.
Insects breathe through a series Of
holes or pores along the side of the body
and so on through air tubes or trachea
to every part of the body. In these
tubes the blood comes in contact with
the air, as in the higher animals in the
lungs.
1t will be seen the structure and in
ternal arrangement of insects are very
different from vertebrates or quadrupeds.
Insects are animals and reproduce their
kind, they eat, drink and sleep, see, hear
and smell, all through organs very diff
ferent from the higher orders of ami
mated nature. An insect differs from a
horse as much as the press Franklin
used differs from the modern printing
machine.
The jaws of insects are horny pro-
cesses on each side of the mouth, which
tear the food and move horizontally and
not up and down. In the carnivorious
insects, the taking of food is somewhat
complex, but they have all the organs
| necessary, strong curved teeth to seize
their food with and place it between the
grinders to prepare it for swallowing.
Their sharp teeth are even provided with
hairs and brushes to clean the adjoining
parts.
Insects, when young, eat rapidly and
enormously and hence grow fast. One
author says silk worm in So days eats
10000 times its primitive weight. When
the insect, however, has finished its
transformations, it either takes no food
at all or merely sips the honey of flowers
as in the butterfly while the June beetle
and many others eat the leaves of trees,
and the tiger and ground beetles devour
other insects.
Some insects, like the grasshopper,
just before the stomach, are provided
with a gizzard supplied with rows of
horny teeth to crush the grass fine for
digestion in the stomach. In describing
insects we may well say they are wonder
fully made.
I have been astonished at the rapidity
with which they walk and fly, and at
their muscular power in other ways. We
all know the activity of the house flies
and the skill and activity and muscular
power of ants. In the large animals,
including man, walking is something of
a complex affair and the process is also
an interesting feature in insects. One
author says he found 1898 muscles in a
catapiller, over thousand Of them aid
ing in locomotion. A flea will leap 200
times its own heighth, and some large
beetles will move great weights COM
pared to their own bulk. An insect with
three legs on each side uses three at a
time in walking, the two front and a
middle one and then the two hind ones