212 INSECTS AT HOME. 



colour, that I was no longer surprised that they should hitherto 

 have escaped my observation. 



' This leaf was removed with the eggs upon it, and placed 

 in water, and its place supplied by a fresh one, wliich, on the 

 following day, had three eggs upon it, and the third leaf four 

 eggs, each of which leaves was placed .separately in water. 

 The fourth leaf I suffered to remain with the insects a week, 

 supplying it with fresh water daily, and at the end of that 

 time it had thirty-one eggs upon it. In two other glass tubes 

 I confined single pairs of insects, with a leaf in each, upon 

 which I never found more than a single egg deposited on the 

 same day, and in those leaves taken from the field with larvse 

 in them (same containing six), no two of them were of the 

 same growth. 



' I found great difficulty in preserving the leaves during 

 the length of time necessary for the hatching of the eggs ; and 

 as it would have been impossible to have preserved them 

 long enough for the feeding of the larvse, I began to despair 

 of success, until I observed that, in those leaves taken with 

 larvse in them from the field, it was not uncommon for the 

 larva to leave the burrow it had first commenced, and, travel- 

 ling (which from its formation I had supposed it incapable of 

 doing) to a distant part of the leaf, form a new one. About 

 the time, therefore, when I expected the eggs to hatch, I placed 

 fresh leaves by tlie side of the old ones, to which the young 

 larvse soon found their way, and lodged themselves. 



' The egg hatches in ten days from the time it is laid, and 

 the larva immediately begins bo eat its way into the leaf and 

 form a burrow by feeding upon the pulp between the upper 

 and under surface of the leaf, which, however, is not easily 

 perceptible to the eye unless held up against the light, al- 

 though the track is sufficiently obvious after the larva has left 

 it and it has become dry. The larva is full-fed and goes into 

 the earth at the end of sixteen days, burying itself about an 

 inch and a half below the surface, and in such a situation that 

 the turnip-leaf above may afford shelter in case of rain. I 

 have reason to believe that it remains in the earth about a 

 fortnight before changing into the perfect Beetle. Some of 

 the first specimens of larvse and pupaa which I took in the 

 field I placed in finely pulverised and very dry earth, and in a 



