DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Our Common Insects" (A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and Houses) by A. S. Packard. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Large color photographs illustrate a guide to common Southwestern insects, including such varieties as the tiger beetle, the rainbow grasshopper, the orange skimmer, the kissing bug, the black witch, the giant palo verde root borer, the very tarantula hawk, and the Pinacate beetle.
WHAT IS AN INSECT? When we remember that the insects alone comprise four-fifths of the animal kingdom, and that there are upwards of 200,000 living species, it would seem a hopeless task to define what an insect is. But a common plan pervades the structure of them all. The bodies of all insects consist of a succession of rings, or segments, more or less hardened by the deposition of a chemical substance called chitine; these rings are arranged in three groups: the head, the thorax, or middle body, and the abdomen or hind body. In the six-footed insects, such as the bee, moth, beetle or dragon fly, four of these rings unite early in embryonic life to form the head; the thorax consists of three, as may be readily seen on slight examination, and the abdomen is composed either of ten or eleven rings. The body, then, seems divided or INSECTED into three regions, whence the name INSECT.The head is furnished with a pair of antennæ, a pair of jaws (mandibles), and two pairs of maxillæ, the second and basal pair being united at their base to form the so-called labium, or under lip. These four pairs of appendages represent the four rings of the head, to which they are appended in the order stated above.A pair of legs is appended to each of the three rings of the thorax; while the first and second rings each usually carry a pair of wings.
