NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 63 



which heads the first column of ' South Africa.' The shell, or case, 

 though only membranous, is hard enough to rattle when confined in 

 some small box. Some of the eggs given to me in Cape Town had 

 been procured the previous day by a young gentleman, who assured 

 me that they kept up such a racket in a match-box in which he had 

 placed them, that they disturbed his rest, and he got up in the night 

 to remove them to a drawer at the farthest end of his room. It was 

 the strangest sight to watch these tiny eggs rolling and springing or 

 standing on end, and leaping like pith-balls on an electrifying machine. 

 Almost a foot they sometimes jumped, either in height or in distance, 

 and by chance beyond the edge of the table, when they fell to the floor, 

 keeping me busy in picking them up again. It was mail day, and I 

 was deep in my weekly despatches ; so at last I allowed one of them to 

 remain on the carpet and jump ad lihitxtm, while I consigned the others 

 to their box and resumed my pen. Very soon, however, on glancing 

 down, the miniature egglet — my new and precious curiosity — was not 

 to be seen. At once, yet with the utmost caution, I was on hands and 

 knees searching the carpet long and patiently ; and it must have been 

 nearly an hour before I discovered the wandering mite at the farther 

 end of the room. But alas for my despatches, it was then too late to 

 mail them. Fancy having one's entire morning consumed, and busi- 

 ness frustrated, by the irrepressible egg of an insect ! These eggs are 

 ignorantly supposed to be seeds " growing" on a bush. On a bush it 

 is true they are found, and not infrequently, but enclosed in a sort of 

 tumour, like the oak-gall. The parent insect deposits a single egg in a 

 leaf, where as it grows it produces the swelling. It is only when 

 detached from the bush that the embryo becomes excited and keeps up 

 a perpetual motion, as if it were bewitched. The first I saw were 

 exhibited at one of the meetings of the South African Philosophical 

 Society, by Eoland Trimen, Esq., F.L.S., F.E.S., and the author of 

 that splendid work on the ' South African Butterflies.' Mr. Trimen 

 had carefully studied the eggs for several years in succession, but had 

 never succeeded in hatching them. The branches wither and die 

 before the eggs are hatched. But he has examined the larva, which 

 he considers more nearly resembles that of a coleopterous insect than 

 any other. It must be a very large beetle to produce such an egg. 

 The " jumping," he thinks, is produced by an action similar to that 

 of the cheese-maggot, which, by the peculiar flip or catch of head and 

 tail, launches itself a distance of many inches. The shrub on which 

 these very remarkable eggs are deposited is the Taai bush — -tough 

 bush, from its unbreakable stems. Mr. Trimen signified his intention 

 of having an entire Taai bush dug up and planted in the Museum 

 Garden, that he might watch the hatching of those provoking little 

 eggs. He does not intend that science is to be baffled by a beetle. 

 When I learn the result of his investigations I shall hope to report it 

 in ' South Africa.' — Catherine C. Hopley ; 42, Haggard Eoad, Twick- 

 enham. 



[The above was originally published as a letter to the Editor in 

 ' South Africa,' Dec. 1st, 1894. We are sure that many of our readers 

 would be interested to learn the result of Mr. Trimen's investigations, 

 and hope that Miss Hopley will favour us with any further particulars 

 she may obtain. — Ed. Entom.] 



