70 STATES OF INSECTS. (Lge.) 
sition, is very singular: the female deposits one or two 
large suboviform capsules, as large as half their abdomen, 
rounded on one side, and on the other straight and ser- 
rated, which at first is white and soft, but soon becomes 
brown and hard. This egg-case, as it may be called, 
contains sixteen or eighteen eggs arranged in a double 
series, and the cock-roaches when hatched make their 
escape through a cleft in its straight side, which shuts so 
accurately when they have quitted it, that at first it ap- 
pears as entire as before*. The insects of the genus 
Mantis also, or what are called the praying insects, when 
they deposit their eggs, eject with them a soft substance, 
which hardens in the air and forms a long kind of enve- 
lope resembling parchment, in which the eggs are ar- 
ranged also in a double series. And the Locusts are 
said by Morier? to deposit in the ground an oblong sub- 
stance, of the shape of their abdomen, which contains a 
considerable number of eggs arranged neatly in rows. 
The peristaltic motion observed in the females of some 
insects during oviposition has been before described‘. 
ii. Sctuation. Under this head I include the situation 
in which the female insect places her eggs when extruded, 
whether she continues her care of them and carries them 
about till they hatch, or whether she entirely deserts 
them, placing them either without a covering within 
reach of their food, or enveloping them in hair or other- 
wise protecting them from accident or the attack of 
* Goeze Naturf. xvii. 183—. t. iv. f. 16—19. Comp. N. Dict. 
@ Hist. Nat. iii, 475. and xix. 239. De Geer iii. 533. 
> Second Journey through Persia, 100—. 
~ See Vou. If. p. 36, 
