2 56 The Ottawa Naturalist [March 



nothing, perhaps of necessity, for I do not recollect that I gave 

 her any room-mates, but before long she began to lay eggs at 

 random in her prison, fastening them by one side to the walls 

 of the box. In all she laid about a dozen, then died. The eggs 

 bore a close resemblance to small caraway vSeeds, being curved 

 in about the same way, the convex side, Vjv which each was 

 attached, smooth under ordinary powers of the hand lens, the 

 rest of the surface ornamented with about ten or twelve longi- 

 tudinal rows of scale-like projections. One end of the egg was 

 rounded off, the other bore a structure like the lid of a jar with 

 a tapering peg in the middle. After a few days the eggs were 

 carefully detached from their moorings and put in a pill box 

 on my library table where they were duly forgotten for a space 

 of several weeks. 



One evening in the middle of November, while looking for 

 some specimens that had been mislaid, I opened the box and 

 was pleased to see the first little bug out of the egg, a miniature 

 of his mother, even to the rocking motion with which he re- 

 sponded to my letting the light into his dark abode. Next day, 

 two more came on the scene, and the day following brought out 

 a fourth. In all cases the infants had escaped from the egg 

 by pushing off the handled lid, which however often remained 

 attached to the shell as by a hinge. The fifth bug died when 

 half way out, and no more got even that far, so I still have 

 several eggs to serve the original purpose of mounts for micro- 

 scopic slides. The young animals were almost perfectly colorless 

 and all died within three or four days, though I had hoped that 

 the stronger would manage to keep alive at the expense of the 

 more newly born until a few mosquitoes or gnats could be 

 obtained from the cellarway which furnishes that sort of 

 entomological material allr winter. 



Some of the little bugs have been mounted in balsam on 

 slides and.whenr projected on a screen by means of the microscope 

 attachment of our stereopticon, show the characteristic elonga- 

 tion of antennae, body and legs ver}^ nicely. The front legs have 

 the same spiny teeth as in fully grown individuals showing that 

 the insect pursues a predaceous life from birth. Their history 

 ought to be fairh' easily followed by any one who has the fortune 

 to find females in the fall of the year. A part of the eggs might 

 be kept in a warm room as mine were, if provision were made 

 in advance for supplying the young with food when they ap- 

 peared, but it would probably be better to keep a good propor- 

 tion of them in a cool cellar until spring, this would doubtless 

 retard hatching until that season, most likely the natural period 

 of appearance. 



