INSECTS
When the young roaches first liberate themselves from the capsule, they are helpless creatures, for each is contained in a close-fitting membrane that binds its folded legs and antennae tightly to the body and keeps the head pressed down against the breast (Fig. 51 A). The inclosing sheath, however, a film so delicate as to be almost invisible, is soon burst by the struggling of the little roach anxious to be free—it splits and rapidly slides down over the body (B), from which it is at last pushed off. The shrunken, discarded remnant of the skin is now such an insignificant flake that it scarce seems possible it so recently could have enveloped the body of the insect.
The newly liberated young roach dashes off on its slim legs with an activity quite surprising in a creature that has never had the use of its legs before. It is so slender of figure (Fig. 51 C) that it does not look like a roach, and it is pale and colorless except for a mass of bright green material in its abdomen. But, almost at once, it begins to change; the back plates of the thorax flatten out, the body shortens by the overlapping of its segments, the abdomen takes on a broad, pear-shaped outline, the head is retracted beneath the prothoracic shield, and by the end of hall an hour the little insect is unmistakably a young cockroach (D).
The roaches have a potent enemy in the house centipede, that creature of so many legs (Fig. 52) that it looks like an animated blur as it occasionally darts across the living-room floor or disappears in the shades of the basement before you are sure whether you have seen something or not, but which is often trapped in the bathtub, where its appearance is likely to drive the housewife into hysteria. Unless you are fond of roaches, however, the house centipede should be protected and encouraged. The writer once placed one of these centipedes in a covered glass dish containing a female Croton bug and a capsule of her eggs which were hatching. No sooner were the young roaches running about than the centipede began a feast which
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