128 



PROCEEDINGS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



SOME REMARKS ON THE EGGS OF NORTH AMERICAN 

 SPECIES OF HEMIPTERA-HETEROPTERA. 



PLATES IX XII. 

 BY OTTO HEIDEMANN. 



Eggs of Hemiptera-Heteroptera are exceedingly diverse in 

 form. They vary from an oval, globular, or cylindrical shape 

 to all sorts of modifications. Some eggs glisten in golden 

 lustre or have other dainty coloring; many are ornamented 

 with delicate, curious patterns, with short spines and long 

 hair-like appendages. This strange appearance of the eggs 

 makes their study very fascinating. Naturalists of former 

 time have already called attention to these beautiful creations 

 of nature, but if is to the credit of the investigators of our day 

 that we have a more profound knowledge, in a morphological 

 and biological sense, of the meaning and the various functions 

 of some organs and appendages attached to these eggs. 



Leuckart in his famous essay on the eggs of insects, published 

 in Mueller's Archiv fiir Anatomic und Physiologic, 1855, 

 considers certain peculiarly shaped organs about the upper 

 pole of hemipterous eggs as a 

 micropyle apparatus; he be- 

 lieved these had an opening 

 through which the sperma- 

 tozoa enter in order to ferti- 

 lize the egg. He terms these 

 organs seminal cups (Samen- 

 becher). They are either 

 microscopical in size or large 

 enough to be seen even by 

 the naked eye. Leuckart dis- 

 covered five different types, FIG. i. * 

 which could be divided into 



two groups. In one group of eggs these organs stand free 

 and erect on the outer surface around the rim towards the upper 

 egg-pole; in the other group of eggs they are attached to the 

 inner side of a band-like extension of the rim. (Fig. 1, a 

 and b.) 



Julius Gross published an interesting paper on the ovaries 

 of Hemiptera 1 wherein he disputes Leuckart's theory that 

 these appendages are the transmitters of the sperm. He holds 

 that they are a pneumatic device for ventilating the interior 

 of the egg, keeping it in healthy condition. He calls these 

 organs, being a part of the chorion, chorial processes 



1 Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Zoologie, p. 139, 1901. 



