In the routine course of examining the tissues of the entire gut length of two selected grasshoppers the writer was impressed by the fact that the literature, especially generalized texts on insect anatomy and physiology, give practically no space to the important but somewhat obscure connective tissue of the midgut. Although loose connective tissue is sufficiently obvious in the large folds of pharynx, proventricular teeth, and of the fore-intestine, the author had to persuade himself by repeated examination of the midgut tissues of Brachystola magna (Gir.) and Romalea microptera (Beauv.) that connective tissue was definitely an essential constituent in the region here referred to. It became increasingly obvious that such tissue should be present both from genetic and adaptational considerations. Especially was the adaptional value evident when it was observed in a variety of preparations that the midgut is completely invested in loose connective tissue so reinforced as to constitute a probably firm “elastic” network covering the bases of epithelial masses and penetrating up between them. The unsupported epithelium soft and folded as it is in the midgut and its caeca, could scarcely be expected to endure the viscissitudes of the abrasive and stretching effects of a mass of such coarse vegetation as these insects ingest.
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F. A. Riedel (1946) studied this question.