Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/317

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METAMORPHOSIS

is reduced to a few scattered cells, which build up the fat- body of the adult. The internal adult organs undergo a continuous develop- ment throughout the pupal period and are practically complete when the latter terminates with the molt to the adult. But the external parts, after quickly attaining a halfway stage of development at the beginning of the pupal metamorphosis are checked in their growth by the hardening of the cuticular covering of the body wall, and m their half-formed shape they must remain to the end of the pupal period. It is only by a subsequent growth of the cellular layer of the body wall beneath the loosened cuticula of the pupa that the external adult parts are finally perfected in structure; and it is only when the pupal cuticula is then cast off and the organs cramped within it are gi?en freedom to expand that the adult insect at last appears in its fully mature form.

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