302 Mr. Newport on the Natural History 



When an unimpregnated female Meloe is confined without her partner, and 

 is well-supplied with food, the ova are developed within her, and her body 

 becomes more than usually enlarged, owing to the maturation of other ova 

 besides those which are ready for fecundation. If this is still withheld, she 

 will not deposit her eggs, but soon evinces symptoms of great anxiety, and 

 ceases to feed. If the pairing of the sexes is not then consummated, she 

 traverses her prison in a state of great excitement, examining every side of it, 

 and trying to effect her escape. After a few days she becomes more quiet, 

 and excavates her burrow, and like some Lepidoptera, deposits her eggs 

 unimpregnated ; but her instinct is then affected, and she leaves the bur- 

 row open, without covering the eggs with earth, after which she very soon 

 dies. 



When a female has been fecundated at the proper period, she always depo- 

 sits two, and sometimes even three or four separate layings of eggs, at inter- 

 vals of from one to two or three weeks. The first laying of eggs is always 

 the most abundant. The number of eggs then deposited is at least three or 

 four thousand. In order to ascertain the exact number produced by M. pro- 

 scarabceus at her first laying, I removed the ovaries from a specimen that had 

 been impregnated, and having divided one of these into several portions 

 beneath the microscope, I counted the number of eggs in each portion sepa- 

 rately, and found that the total number in one ovary amounted to two thou- 

 sand one hundred and nine perfectly-formed eggs, all ready for exclusion ; so 

 that the two ovaries contained the astonishing number of four thousand two 

 hundred and eighteen eggs. Perhaps it may be well here to state, that the 

 eggs of Meloe are developed each in a separate ovisac, on the exterior of two 

 uterus-like ovaries, or enlarged oviducts, into which they descend before they 

 are impregnated. Nearly the whole of these are deposited at the first laying, 

 their impregnation being effected from the orifice of the spermatheca, as they 

 ' pass along the common oviduct near its outlet. When the matured egg has 

 descended from its ovisac into the ovary, the mouth of the ovisac is again 

 closed, and a new egg-germ immediately passes into the sac from the ovarial 

 capsule attached to it ; and this germ, when fully developed, constitutes the 

 egg of the second laying. When this egg has passed into the ovary, another 

 germ takes its place, and is the egg of the third laying, and so on with each 



