Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/115

 AND OTHER ANCIENT INSECTS

ended only when the last of the brood had been devoured. The mother roa(h was not at the time molested, but next morning she lay dead on her back, her head severed and

dragged some distance from the body, which was sucked dry of its juices--mute evidence of the tragedy that had befallen some- time in the night, probably when the pangs of returning hunger stirred the centipede to renewed activitv. The bouse centipede does not confine itself to a diet of live roaches, for it will eat almost any kind of food, but it is never a pest of the household larder. Most species of roaches have two pairs of well-developed wings, which they ordinarily keep folded over the back, for in their usunl pursuits the domestic spe- cies do not often fly, except oc- casionally when hard pressed to avoid capture. The front wings are longer and thicker than the hind wings, and are laid over the latter, which are rhin and folded fanwise when not in use. 111 these characters the roaches resemble the grasshoppers and katydids, and their famih', the Blattidae, is

Fro. ç2. The common house centipede, &tligtra forctps natural size), a destroyer of young roaches

usually placed with these insects in the order Orthoptera. The wings of insects are interesting objects to studv. When spread out fiat, as are those of the roach shown in Figure 53, they are seen to consist of a thin membranous tissue strengtlened by many branching ribs, or veins, extending outward from the base. The wings of all insects are constructed on the same general plan and have the

[831

INSECTS

same