2S2 • [September 



IIL " There are many Insects," says Agasslz, " that pass through 

 their metamorphoses within the egg, appearing as complete Insects at 

 the moment of their birth ; but the series of changes is nevertheless 

 analogous to that of the Butterfly, whose existence as Worm, Chrysalis 

 and Winged Insect is so well known to all. Take the Grrasshopper for 

 instance : with the exception of the wings it is born in the mature 

 form ; but within the egg it has had its Worm-like stage, as much as 

 the Butterfly that We knew a few months ago as a Caterpillar." (Meth- 

 ods of Stiidi/, p. 237.) 



For a long time I have noticed in the winter and spring, under the 

 scales of a gall like a pine-cone growing on a species of willow, (Sah'.r 

 cordata Muhl., as kindly determined for me by Mr. M. S. Bebb of 

 Washington,) and called sf rob ilo ides by Baron Osten Sacken. great 

 numbers of singular, yellowish, cylindrical, exarticulate, semitranspa- 

 rent bodies, .16 — .17 inch long, about seven times as long as wide, 

 rounded at each end, and a little tapered towards what afterwards proved 

 to be the anterior end. Sometimes in a single gall there were over a 

 dozen of them, and I supposed them at first to be the pupal cocoons of 

 some inquilinous Cecidomi/ia. When opened early in the spring, they 

 contained nothing but an apparently homogeneous, subviscid, yellowish 

 fluid, but about the beginning of May I noticed that egg-yellow matter 

 had accumulated in their anterior half, and about the middle of May 

 two large black eyes became visible in many specimens through the 

 semitransparent external integument, about I of the way from the an- 

 terior end. On May 26 there hatched out from two of these bodies, 

 which I had insulated in a vial along with several score of others, little 

 Orthoptera belonging to the genus Orchelimum, destitute of any ves- 

 tiges of wings, but otherwise formed, as is usual, very much like the 

 perfect insect. When first hatched, they were all pale green except the 

 eyes, but they afterwards rapidly acquired blackish markings. I had 

 long ago noticed that the imago of a species of Orcheh'mum, perhaps 

 ylahcrrimum Burm., haunted another species of willow which grows 

 -in an entirely diff"erent locality — Salix nljra Marshall according to 

 Mr. Bebb — but which bears no galls at all resembling strohUoides 

 O. S. On carefully extracting the insect from an egg which showed 

 the black eyes rather conspicuously, I discovered that its body was so 

 much elongated, as it lay stretched out at full length in the egg, as to 



