166 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



approached by another male, when he raises his hind legs and pro- 

 duces a stridulating noise by rubbing his thighs against his elytra. 

 The female makes, perhaps, several deposits of eggs, of from twenty- 

 two to thirty-six eggs each, and she receives a male between each 

 deposit of a nest. 



OVIPOSITING. ^ 



The female selects warm, dry knolls ; it may be slightly soft or 

 porous, but generally a slifF soil with tufts of grass cut or grazed short, 

 or a hard cement bed covered with cobble stones ; never soft plowed 

 ground or yielding sand. A favorite place is a slightly adobe spot in 

 a dry Ineadow _; and the first arrivals bore their holes down by the 

 grass roots until that location is filled, or all around a half exposed 

 cobble stone ; afterward the entire surface of the ground will l:;>e per- 

 forated. This curious proceeding is accomplished as follows : The 

 locust places the end of her abdomen upon the spot selected, retract- 

 ing the rhabdites within, then expanding them with great force if 

 necessary ; the material before them is torn away and packed to the 

 side, the hooks are again retracted and the abdomen extended, when 

 the hooks again cope with and remove material, and thus a hole is 

 speedily drilled to suit, from a half to one and a half inches deep. 

 The sebific secretion is then extruded and smeared over the bottom 

 and side of the hole, and the eggs are passed down one by one and 

 placed by the forceped finger in a nearly exact position side by side,, 

 the head of the embryo upward, and in three or four rows, of about 

 eight eggs each. The top of the hole is then filled with more of the 

 at first frothy, cellular secretion, soon becoming hard and impervious 

 to water. The position of the eggs — with the embryo upward — -is^ 

 important to notice, as, this being essential to the safety of the egg, 

 upon this fact is based the utility of plowing under the eggs, or of 

 harrowing them to the surface, if feasible, by which means they become 

 addled. 



When deposited the brownish eggs are j-^y- of an inch long, slightly 

 curved, and so closely packed that the inner ones become hexagonaL 

 By spring they are the size of rice kernels, and are plump cylinders, 

 every one, while the hard walls of the pouch have become softened 

 and ruptured. This growing of insect eggs is one of the strangest 

 phenomena in nature. The eggs of ants increase ten times the original 

 size before hatching. Where does the material come from, and how 

 does it get within the egg? Locust eggs are first deposited in southern 

 California about the middle of June, in Sierra Valley about the 5th 

 of July, and they begin to hatch about the 10th of April and the 10th 

 of May, respectively. 



EMBRYOLOGY. 



A locust egg has two proper envelopes beside the outer hard sebific- 

 crust, corresponding to the white shell of a hen's egg. First beneath 

 this shell is a yellowish tough membrane, the chorion. When ripe, 

 this chorion is rendered soft and easily sundered in a certain place — 

 a ring about the neck of the embryon— and in due season a cap-piece 

 flies off' from pressure beneath. The amnion is next within. It is 

 a thin, tough, translucent membrane, or mantle, enveloping the 

 embryon and each separate limb like a glove._ If placed in alcohol 

 a few moments just before hatching, the amnion is rendered trans- 

 parent, "revealing the embryon with legs closely folded upon the 



