Report of the State Entomologist. 



159 



Packaed: Guide Stud. Ins., 1869, p. 574, flg. 568; in 3d Kept. U. S. Entomolog. Comm., 



1883, pp. 310-312 (anatomy). 

 Hubbakd: Oranse Insects, 1885, pp. 189, 190, figs. 90,91. 

 Lintner: in Count. Gent., lii, 1887, p. 9 (eggs, etc.). 



The Egg-Packet. 



Two egg-packets, readily referable to Mantis Carolina, were received 



from Mr. C. M. Hedges, of Chaiiottsville, Va., one of which had given out 



the young insects which were sent with it, during the preceding April — 



the other, with its eggs unhatched, was taken in the month of December. 



Both wore found on exposed board fences, and several others had been 



seen during the autumn. They were accompanied with 



a request for some information respecting them. 



These strange-looking objects would probably not have 

 been recognized by their collector as containing eggs had 

 not the hatched insects disclosed their nature. They are 

 in masses of considerable size, as shown in the accom- 

 panying figure, of a gray color, over an inch long by 

 one half-inch broad and one-fourth of an inch high, 

 rounded at one end and pointed at the other. In gen- 

 eral shape, they resemble a small boat turned bottom 

 upward ; and this resemblance is still more marked in 

 the broad, flat, keel-like structure that traverses its 

 length. 



Careful examination will show from twenty to twenty- 

 five layers in the packet, or more correctly, as many folds 

 on each side, indicating, if each such fold contains a 

 single egg, from forty to fifty as the usual number of 

 eggs. From a larger cluster than the above, sent to me 

 in February, by Mr. C, R. Moore, of Birds Nest,Va., sixty- 

 five young Mantis subsequently emerged. 



This strange-looking object is well represented in the 

 figure, except that the " keel " does notpresentthe braided 

 appearance there shown, but could be better illustrated 

 by corrugating in short folds a narrow strip of flexible 

 card-board, and then pressing at the ends until the folds 

 touch one another in the center. Thej' are simply in con- 

 tact centrally, and not interlaced, as made to appear in 

 the fiarure. 



Fig. 65.— Egg - 

 packets of Man- 

 tis Cakolina. 



How are the Eggs Deposited ? 

 The manner in which the eggs are deposited does not appear to be 

 positively known — whether each one is extruded singly and the entire 

 mass built up symmetrically by successive additions, as are the egg- 

 pods of some other members of the same order of Orthoptera, the 

 grasshoppers (see the oviposition of the Eocky Mountain locust, in 

 the Firat Rept. of the . U. S. Entoxiological Commission, pp. 223-225, 

 figs. 1-4), or if, as in other Orthoptera, as the cockroach and Croton- 

 bug, it is slowly extruded as a full-formed egg-case. That it is not free, 

 but fastened by its under surface to boards or branches of trees, even 

 adapting itself to curves in the latter, would apparently indicate that it is 

 built up on the surface where it is placed. Prof. Riley, in his First Report, 



