Development of an Embiid. By J. C. Kershaw. 



25 



in this position. Before oviposition the female gnaws the chosen 

 spot fairly smooth. The eggs are laid with their posterior poles 

 touching the bark, but the interstices between the eggs are filled 

 up with excrement to the level of the lids. The female searches 

 for the dry pellets of excrement which are plentiful beneath the 

 Embiid welts. She chews it up and probably salivates it, and 

 plasters the material around the eggs as they are laid with her 

 jaws and palpi, now and again intermingling a little silk with a 

 rapid scratching actipn of the front tarsi. The eggs are not all 



■%-ex' 



Fig. 4. 



Eggs. — A. View looking on top of part of egg-batch, the blanket of webs and 

 excrement removed 

 B. Longitudinal section (eggs not in section) through part of egg-batch. 

 b, bark ; ex\ excrement between the eggs ; ex 2 , blanket of excrement 

 over the eggs ; to 1 , first silk web ; w-, second silk web (only a small 

 piece of second web and blanket shown). 



laid the same day, though the excrement, etc., is added as they 

 are laid. When all are laid, a thin web is spun over the top of 

 the batch, a layer of excrement spread over this, and another web 

 spun over the blanket of excrement. The whole affair is included 

 under some part of the owner's large general web and tunnels. 

 The female watches over her egg-batch like an earwig, but, of 

 course, cannot shift the eggs about as the latter insect often does. 

 The number of eggs in a batch varies greatly — from forty to 

 eighty — and any number between these figures is common ; below 



