THE FIELD-CRICKET 121 



rested for a moment, walked away, and repeated the 

 operation ; not once, but many times, first here, then 

 there, all over the area at her disposal. Her behaviour 

 was precisely the same as that of the Decticus, except that 

 her movements were more deliberate. At the end of 

 twenty-four hours her eggs were apparently all laid. For 

 greater certainty I waited a couple of days longer, 



I then examined the earth in the pot. The eggs, of a 

 straw-yellow, are cylindrical in form, with rounded 

 ends, and measure about one-tenth of an inch in length. 

 They are placed singly in the soil, in a perpendicular 

 position. 



I have found them over the whole area of the pot, at a 

 depth of a twelfth of an inch. As closely as the diffi- 

 culties of the operation will allow, I have estimated the 

 eggs of a single female, upon passing the earth through a 

 sieve, at five or six hundred. Such a family will certainly 

 undergo an energetic pruning before very long. 



The egg of the Cricket is a curiosity, a tiny mechanical 

 marvel. After hatching it appears as a sheath of opaque 

 white, open at the summit, where there is a round and 

 very regular aperture, to the edge of which adheres a 

 little valve like a skull-cap which forms the lid. Instead 

 of breaking at random under the thrusts or the cuts of 

 the new-formed larva, it opens of itself along a line of least 

 resistance which occurs expressly for the purpose. The 

 curious process of the actual hatching should be 

 observed. 



A fortnight after the egg is laid two large eye-marks, 

 round and of a reddish black, are seen to darken the 

 forward extremity of the egg. Next, a little above these 

 two points, and right at the end of the cylinder, a tiny 



