The greater part of our information concerning the fine structure of striated muscle has been derived from a study of the vertebrates. Insect, or invertebrate other than mollusc, muscle has been little studied with the electron microscope. Richards, Anderson and Hance (1942) illustrated a microtome sectioning technique for electron microscopy with sections of cockroach striated muscle. Farrant and Mercer (1952) compared grasshopper wing muscle with crab leg muscle, obtaining excellent photographs of myofilaments but failing to observe the classical lines and bands described for vertebrate myofibrils. In recent studies (Edwards, Souza Santos, Souza Santos, and Sawaya, 1953; 1954) of the muscles of the water beetle, Hydrophilus piceus, it was found that the flight muscle fibril differs from that of the coxa in color, form, size and number of cross lines; that the presence of cross lines depends upon the state of contraction; and that the insect muscle fibril differs considerably from that of the vertebrate.
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Edwards et al. (1954) studied this question.