THE OSMIiE 249 



placing of a riper egg by another in an earlier stage of 

 development. 



Therefore, in each ovarian tube, in each glove-finger, 

 the emergence of the eggs occurs according to the order 

 governing their arrangement in the common sheath ; and 

 any other sequence is absolutely impossible. Moreover, 

 at the nesting-period, the six ovarian sheaths, one by one 

 and each in its turn, have at their base an egg which in 

 a very short time swells enormously. Some hours or 

 even a day before the laying, that egg by itself repre- 

 sents or even exceeds in bulk the whole of the ovigerous 

 apparatus. This is the egg which is on the point of 

 being laid. It is about to descend into the oviduct, in 

 its proper order, at its proper time; and the mother has 

 no power to make another take its place. It is this egg, 

 necessarily this egg and no other, that will presently be 

 laid upon the provisions, w^hether these be a mess of 

 honey or a live prey ; it alone is ripe, it alone lies at the 

 entrance to the oviduct; none of the others, since they 

 are farther back in the row and not at the right stage of 

 development, can be substituted at this crisis. Its birth 

 is inevitable. 



What will it yield, a male or a female? No lodging 

 has been prepared, no food collected for it; and yet both 

 food and lodging have to be in keeping with the sex that 

 will proceed from it. And here is a much more puzzling 

 condition: the sex of that egg, wRose advent is predes- 

 tined, has to correspond with the space which the mother 

 happens to have found for a cell. There is therefore no 

 room for hesitation, strange though the statement may 



