Enormous forelegs, more than twice the length of the rest of its body, are the characteristic of a black wood beetle discovered by Alfred Russel Wallace in the Moluccas. This beetle, Euchirus longimanus, covers a space of 8 inches with all its legs extended. Another insect curiosity of the Malay Archipelago is an antlered fly. Various species have protuberances on their heads that suggest the horns of deer, elk, and moose in miniature.

Even more remarkable is a stalk-eyed fly of South Africa, Diopsis apicalis. Like the hammerhead shark, it has its eyes extending out from the sides of its head. The stalks to which they are attached, however, are drawn out to such surprising length that the measurement from eye to eye is one-third more than the length of the body from head to tail.

An abdomen that has amazing powers of distention is a characteristic of the nymph of the bloodsucking Rhodnius. In a few minutes, one of these nymphs can distend itself with blood up to 12 times its original weight. As the huge meal is digested, the abdomen contracts smoothly like a deflating balloon. Similarly, the abdomens of the honey ants of the Southwest possess the ability to expand enormously. Certain members of the colony act as storage vessels for the honeydew gathered by the workers. They never leave the nest. With abdomens so swollen they cannot walk, they cling to the roof of their underground chamber, regurgitating food to the workers when it is needed.

Various other ants must be numbered among the insect oddities. In Ant-Hill Odyssey, William M. Mann tells of collecting a species that is known to Brazilian natives as "The Terrible Ant." Fully an inch in length, it is said to produce a serious fever by its sting. A hundred years ago, when Henry W. Bates was collecting in the Amazon basin, he encountered villages that had been deserted because of an invasion of fire ants. These small red insects have stings like red-hot needles. Then there are the army ants that march in long lines in the jungle, the slave-making ants that raid other colonies for pupae, the tree ant of India, Oecophylla smaragdina, that uses its larvae as a means of sewing leaves together into a nest, passing the silk-producing grubs back and forth from one leaf edge to another to provide a solid bond. Within these leaf sheds, the ants keep smaller insects that produce honeydew, the sweet fluid upon which the ants feed.

Honeydew is so universally relished by ants that it has been described as their "national dish." Other insects have a taste for varied and often surprising things. That goat of the insect world, the drug-store beetle, is known to consume 45 different substances, in-eluding the poisons aconite and belladonna. Other beetles feed on cigarettes, mustard plasters, and red pepper. Ants have shown themselves resistant to cyanide. Termites are able to digest cellulose in wood because of the aid of minute organisms within their intestines. In the case of some insects, a reduced diet slows down growth. Some wood-boring grubs, such as those of the cerambycid beetles, sometimes live in house timbers or furniture for years after they have been put in place. In one instance, an adult beetle emerged from a porch post that had been standing for 20 years. The dried timber lacks the nutritive qualities of the living tree and the growth of the grub is arrested, so long periods pass before it reaches maturity. Underground, the nymph of the periodical cicada spends more than a decade and a half tunneling through darkness in the soil before it emerges into its brief life as an adult.

In the mating and reproduction activities of the insects, we find some of the strangest habits of all. The deathwatch beetle, that stand-by of ghost stories laid in old castles, bumps its head on the top of its wooden tunnel to send a kind of telegraphic message to its mate. To attract the attention of the females at mating time, the males of certain flies blow shining little bubbles of froth. Some chalcidflies which parasitize caterpillars, have the faculty of laying self-multiplying eggs. More than 2,000 larvae may be produced by the depositing of a single chalcid egg in the body of a victim. During the lifetime of a termite queen, in the Tropics, as many as 10 million eggs may come from the insect's bloated body.

L. C. Miall, in The Natural History of Aquatic Insects, tells of a minute fly found in England under the bark of poplar, willow, and beech trees. It produces viviparously small larvae "which escape by tearing open the body of their parent and in turn produce other larvae after the same fashion."

These seem fantastic creatures and bizarre habits. But to one who views with fresh eyes the old, taken-for granted, commonplace habits of even the most familiar insects the everyday butterflies and grasshoppers and ants we see about us there is in the events of their lives much that is a source of astonishment and wonder. A century ago, this amazing strangeness of the familiar insects was eloquently expressed in describing the metamorphosis of a moth in the early pages of the pioneer entomology by William Kirby and William Spence.

"Were a naturalist to announce to the world," they write, "the discovery of an animal which first existed in the form of a serpent; which then penetrated into the earth, and weaving a shroud of pure silk of the finest texture, contracted itself within this covering into a body without external mouth or limbs, and resembling, more than anything else, an Egyptian mummy; and which, lastly after remaining in this state without food and without motion . . . should at the end of that period burst its silken cerements, struggle through its earthly covering and start into day a winged bird what think you would be the sensation excited by this strange piece of intelligence? After the first doubts of its truth were dispelled, what astonishment would succeed! Amongst the learned, what surmises! what investigations! Even the most torpid would flock to the sight of such a prodigy."

EDWIN WAY TEALS is a past president of the New York Entomological Society and the author of numerous books oil insects, including Grassroot Jungles, The Boys' Book of Insects, Near Horizons, The Golden Throng, and North With the Spring. His books have appeared in British, Spanish, French, Swedish, Finnish, and Braille editions. Near Horizons was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing. In 1949, Mr. Teale edited a one-volume omnibus of the writings of Fabre, entitled The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre.