f the twigs that provide the grub with food. The
bunch of grains quivers at the least breath.

We know the egg-cluster of the Hemerobius, the object of so many
mistakes to the untrained observer. The little Lace-winged Fly with
the gold eggs sets up on a leaf a group of long, tiny columns as fine
as a spider's thread, each bearing an egg as a capital. The whole
resembles pretty closely a tuft of some long-stemmed mildew. Remember
also the Eumenes' hanging egg,[1] which swings at the end of a thread,
thus protecting the grub when it takes its first mouthfuls of the heap
of dangerous game. The Taxicorn Clythra provides us with a third
example of eggs fitted with suspension-threads, but so far nothing has
given me an inkling of the function or the use of this string. Though
the mother's intentions escape me, I can at least describe her work in
some detail.

[Footnote 1: Cf. _The Mason-wasps_: chap. i.--_Translator's Note_.]

The eggs are smooth, coffee-coloured and shaped like a thimble. If you
hold them to the light, you see in the thickness of their skin five
circular zones, darker than the rest and producing almost the same
effect as the hoops of a barrel. The end attached to the
suspension-thread is slightly conical; the other is lopped off
abruptly and the section is hollowed into a circular mouth. A good
lens shows us inside this, a little below the rim, a fine white
membrane, as smooth as the skin of a drum.

In addition, from the edge of the orifice there rises a wide
membranous tab, whitish and delicate, which might be taken for a
raised lid. Nevertheless there is no raising of a lid after the eggs
are laid. I have seen the egg leave the oviduct; it is then what it
will be later, but lighter in colour. No matter: I cannot believe that
so complicated a machine can make its way, with all sail set, through
the maternal straits. I imagine that the lid-like appendage remains
lowered, closing the mouth, until the moment when the egg sees the
light. Then and not till then does it rise.

Guided by the rather less complex structure of the eggs of the other
Clythrae and of the Cryptocephali, I think of trying to take the
strange germ to pieces; and I succeed after a fashion. Under the
coffee-coloured sheath, which forms a little five-hooped barrel, is a
white membrane. This is what we see through the mouth and what I
compared with the skin of a drum. I recognize it as the regulation
tunic, the usual envelope of any in