ART. 1. 



NORTH AMERICAN 6AWFLIES ROHWER. 



21 



female bends the apex of her abdomen well under — exerts her ovi- 

 positor slightly from the sheath and endeavors by a posterior sliding 

 motion to catch it in the stem tissue. Once caught she works her 

 lancets until the slit is well under way, then she raises her abdomen, 

 completing the exsertion of her ovipositor and exposing both the 

 lancets and the lance to view. The lancets are worked opposite each 

 other up and down, by a somewhat rolling (side to side) motion of 

 the apical tergites of the abdomen, while the lance seems to act as 

 guide, brace, and track for the moving lancets. This part of the 

 work is continued anteriorly until the ovipositor is buried in the 

 tissue and the sheath once again is in contact with the st^m. A short 

 period of work follows during which the ovipositor is probably with- 

 drawn from the slit and recased in the sheath, and the egg laid. 

 The abdomen is then swung back, its apex in contact with the stem, 

 until the slit is passed, then it is straightened to the normal position 

 and the female moves to the next location to be favored with an egg. 

 The following table records the number of eggs laid on each of 

 several days, and the number and sex of these insects present in the 

 cage at the time of oviposition and the result of the day's oviposition. 



Table III, 



The number of eggs a female adult of the bristly rose slug can 

 lay has not been recorded, but the abdomen of a virgin female killed 

 four days after emergence contained 41 eggs. One of the females 

 which died and was removed from the second cage (see Table III) 

 was likewise dissected and 28 eggs were counted from her abdomen. 

 It was, however, impossible to ascertain the condition of these eggs as 

 far as the maturity was concerned owing to their poor preservation. 



Eg^ Slit. — The eggs are laid in short slits in the fluting of the 

 upper surface of the midrib of the leaf and early in their incubation 

 period are concealed in the slit or pocket and covered over with a 

 yellowish white sawdust or ovipositor-torn fiber. During the period 

 of incubation they increase in size until the da}' previous to the hatch- 



