sect's egg. The rest, the little
brown barrel, broached at one end and bearing a raised lid, must
therefore be an accessory integument, a sort of exceptional shell, of
which I do not as yet know any other example.

The Long-legged Clythra and the Four-spotted Clythra know nothing of
packing their eggs in long-stemmed bundles. In June, from the height
of the branches in which they are grazing, both of them carelessly
allow their eggs to drop to the ground, one by one, here and there, at
random and at long intervals, without giving the least thought to
their installation. They might be little grains of excrement, unworthy
of interest and ejected at hazard. The egg-factory and the
dung-factory scatter their products with the same indifference.

Nevertheless, let us bring the lens to bear upon the minute particle
so contumeliously treated. It is a miracle of elegance. In both
species of Clythrae the eggs have the form of truncated ellipsoids,
measuring about a millimetre in length.[2] The Long-legged Clythra's
are a very dark brown and remind one of a thimble, a comparison which
is the more exact inasmuch as they are dented with quadrangular pits,
arranged in spiral series which cross one another with exquisite
precision.

[Footnote 2: .039 inch.--_Translator's Note_.]

Those of the Four-spotted Clythra are pale in colour. They are covered
with convex scales, overlapping in diagonal rows, ending in a point at
the lower extremity, which is free and more or less askew. This
collection of scales has rather the appearance of a hop-cone. Surely a
very curious egg, ill-adapted to gliding gently through the narrow
passages of the ovaries. I feel sure that it does not bristle in this
fashion when it descends the delicate natal sheath; it is near the end
of the oviduct that it receives its coat of scales.

In the case of the three Cryptocephali reared in my cages, the eggs
are laid later; their season is the end of June and July. As in the
Clythrae, there is the same lack of maternal care, the same hap-hazard
dropping of the seeds from the centaury-blossoms and the ilex-twigs.
The general form of the egg is still that of a truncated ellipsoid.
The ornaments vary. In the eggs of the Golden Cryptocephalus and the
Ilex Cryptocephalus they consist of eight flattened, wavy ribs,
winding corkscrew-wise; in those of the Two-spotted Cryptocephalus
they take the form of spiral rows of pits.

What can this envelope be, so remarkable fo