e cell, though this cell contains nourishment for one only.
Whether they proceed from a single individual returning several times,
by inadvertence, to the same place, or are the work of different
individuals unaware of the previous borings, those multiple layings
are very frequent, almost as much so as the normal layings. The largest
which I have noticed consisted of five eggs, but we have no authority
for looking upon this number as an outside limit. Who could say, when
the perforators are numerous, to what lengths this accumulation can
go? I will set forth on some future occasion how the ration of one egg
remains in reality the ration of one egg, despite the multiplicity of
banqueters.

I will end by describing the egg, which is a white, opaque object,
shaped like a much-elongated oval. One of the ends is lengthened out
into a neck or pedicle, which is as long as the egg proper. This neck is
somewhat wrinkled, sinuous and as a rule considerably curved. The whole
thing is not at all unlike certain gourds with an elongated paunch and
a snake-like neck. The total length, pedicle and all, is about 3
millimetres. (About one-eighth of an inch.--Translator's Note.) It is
needless to say, after recognizing the grub's manner of feeding, that
this egg is not laid inside the fostering larva. Yet, before I knew
the habits of the Leucopsis, I would readily have believed that every
Hymenopteron armed with a long probe inserts her eggs into the victim's
sides, as the Ichneumon-flies do to the Caterpillars. I mention this for
the benefit of any who may be under the same erroneous impression.

The Leucopsis' egg is not even laid upon the Mason-bee's larva; it is
hung by its bent pedicle to the fibrous wall of the cocoon. When I go to
work very delicately, so as not to disturb the arrangement in knocking
the nest off its support, and then extract and open the cocoon, I see
the egg swinging from the silken vault. But it takes very little to make
it fall. And so, most often, even though it be merely the effect of the
shock sustained when the nest is removed from its pebble, I find the egg
detached from its suspension-point and lying beside the larva, to which
it never adheres in any circumstances. The Leucopsis' probe does not
penetrate beyond the cocoon traversed; and the egg remains fastened to
the ceiling, in the crook of some silky thread, by means of its hooked
pedicle.

INDEX.

Amazon Ant (see Red Ant).

Ammophila.

Ammop