of varying merit and the metre suits the German language distinctly better than the English. The customary form of hexameter in English verse is exemplified by Coleridge’s descriptive line:—
“In the hex | ameter | rises the | fountain’s | silvery | column.”
Several modern poets, and in particular Robert Browning, and Lord Bowen (1835–1894) have used with effect a truncated hexameter consisting of the usual verse deprived of its last syllable. Thus Browning:—
“Well, it is | gone at | last, the | palace of | music I | reared.”
It is not sufficiently observed that even the classic Greek poets introduced considerable variations into their treatment of the hexameter. These have been treated with erudition in G. Hermann’s De aetate scriptoris Argonauticorum. The differences in the hexameters of the Latin poets were not so remarkable, but even these varied, in various epochs, their treatment of the separate feet, and the position of the caesura. The satirists in particular allowed themselves an extraordinary licence: these hexameters, from Persius, are as far removed from the rhythm of Homer, or even of Virgil, as possible, if they are to remain hexameters:—
| “ | Mane piger stertis. ‘Surge!’ inquit Avaritia, ‘heia |
| Surge!’ negas; instat ‘Surge!’ inquit ‘Non queo.’ ‘Surge!’ | |
| ‘ | Et quid agam?’ ‘Rogitas? en saperdam advehe Ponto.’ ” |
It is also to be noted that various prosodical liberties, due originally to the extreme antiquity of the hexameter, and long reformed and repressed by the culture of poets, were apt to be revived in later ages, by writers who slavishly copied the most antique examples of the art of verse.
See Wilhelm Christ, Metrik der Griechen und Römer, 2te Aufl. (1879).
HEXAPLA (Gr. for “sixfold”), the term for an edition of the Bible in six versions, and especially the edition of the Old Testament compiled by Origen, which placed side by side (1) Hebrew, (2) Hebrew in Greek character, (3) Aquila, (4) Symmachus, (5) Septuagint, (6) Theodotion. See Bible: Old Testament, Texts and Versions.
HEXAPODA (Gr. ἕξ, six, and πούς, foot), a term used in systematic zoology for that class of the Arthropoda, popularly known as insects. Linnaeus in his Systema naturae (1735) grouped under the class Insecta all segmented animals with firm exoskeleton and jointed limbs—that is to say, the insects, centipedes, millipedes, crustaceans, spiders, scorpions and their allies. This assemblage is now generally regarded as a great division (phylum or sub-phylum) of the animal kingdom and known by K. T. E. von Siebold’s (1848) name of Arthropoda. For the class of the true insects included in this phylum, Linnaeus’s old term Insecta, first used in a restricted sense by M. J. Brisson (1756), is still adopted by many zoologists, while others prefer the name Hexapoda, first used systematically in its modern sense by P. A. Latreille in 1825 (Familles naturelles du règne animal), since it has the advantage of expressing, in a single word, an important characteristic of the group. The terms “Hexapoda” and “hexapod” had already been used by F. Willughby, J. Ray and others in the late 17th century to include the active larvae of beetles, as well as bugs, lice, fleas and other insects with undeveloped wings.
Characters.
A true insect, or member of the class Hexapoda, may be known by the grouping of its body-segments in three distinct regions—a head, a thorax and an abdomen—each of which consists of a definite number of segments. In the terminology proposed by E. R. Lankester the arrangement is “nomomeristic” and “nomotagmic.” The head of an insect carries usually four pairs of conspicuous appendages—feelers, mandibles and two pairs of maxillae, so that the presence of four primitive somites is immediately evident. The compound eyes of insects resemble so closely the similar organs in Crustaceans that there can hardly be reasonable doubt of their homology, and the primitively appendicular nature of the eyes in the latter class suggests that in the Hexapoda also they represent the appendages of an anterior (protocerebral) segment. Behind the antennal (or deutocerebral) segment an “intercalary” or tritocerebral segment has been demonstrated by W. M. Wheeler (1893) and others in various insect embryos, while in the lowest insect order—the Aptera—a pair of minute jaws—the maxillulae—in close association with the tongue are present, as has been shown by H. J. Hansen (1893) and J. W. Folsom (1900). Distinct vestiges of the maxillulae exist also in the earwigs and booklice, according to G. Enderlein and C. Börner (1904), and they are very evident in larval may-flies. The number of limb-bearing somites in the insectan head is thus seen to be seven. All of these are to be regarded as primitively post-oral, but in the course of development the mouth moves back to the mandibular segment, so that the first three somites—ocular, antennal and intercalary—lie in front of it. In Lankester’s terminology, therefore, the head of an insect is “triprosthomerous.” The maxillae of the hinder pair become more or less fused together to form a “lower lip” or labium, and the segment of these appendages is, in some insects, only imperfectly united with the head-capsule.
The thorax is composed of three segments; each bears a pair of jointed legs, and in the vast majority of insects the two hindmost bear each a pair of wings. From these three pairs of thoracic legs comes the name—Hexapoda—which distinguishes the class. And the wings, though not always present, are highly characteristic of the Hexapoda, since no other group of the Arthropoda has acquired the power of flight. In the more generalized insects the abdomen evidently consists of ten segments, the hindmost of which often carries a pair of tail-feelers, (cerci or cercopods) and a terminal anal segment. In some cases, however, it can be shown that the cerci really belong to an eleventh abdominal segment which usually becomes fused with the tenth. With very few exceptions the abdomen is without locomotor limbs. Paired processes on the eighth and ninth abdominal segments may be specialized as external organs of reproduction, but these are probably not appendages. The female genital opening usually lies in front of the eighth abdominal segment, the male duct opens on the ninth.
In all main points of their internal structure the Hexapoda agree with other Arthropoda. Specially characteristic of the class, however, is the presence of a complex system of air-tubes (tracheae) for respiration, usually opening to the exterior by a series of paired spiracles on certain of the body segments. The possession of a variable number of excretory tubes (Malpighian tubes), which are developed as outgrowths of the hind-gut and pour their excretion into the intestine, is also a distinctive character of the Hexapoda.
The wings of insects are, in all cases, developed after hatching, the younger stages being wingless, and often unlike the parent in other respects. In such cases the development of wings and the attainment of the adult form depend upon a more or less profound transformation or metamorphosis.
With this brief summary of the essential characters of the Hexapoda, we may pass to a more detailed account of their structure.
Exoskeleton
The outer cellular layer (ectoderm or “hypodermis”) of insects as of other Arthropods, secretes a chitinous cuticle which has to be periodically shed and renewed during the growth of the animal. The regions of this cuticle have a markedly segmental arrangement, and the definite hardened pieces (sclerites) of the exoskeleton are in close contact with one another along linear sutures, or are united by regions of the cuticle which are less chitinous and more membranous, so as to permit freedom of movement.
Head.—The head-capsule of an insect (figs. 1, 2) is composed of a number of sclerites firmly sutured together, so that the primitive segmentation is masked. Above is the crown (vertex or epicranium), on which or on the “front” may be seated three simple eyes (ocelli). Below this comes the front, and then the face or clypeus, to which a very distinct upper lip (labrum) is usually jointed. Behind the labrum arises a process—the epipharynx—which in some blood-sucking insects becomes a formidable piercing-organ. On either side a variable amount of convex area is occupied by the compound eye; in many insects of acute sense and accurate flight these eyes are very large and sub-globular, almost meeting on the middle line of the
