74 STATES OF INSECTS. (Hgg.) 
it to some plant. By means of this anomalous process 
for a beetle, which this insect is instructed by Providence 
thus to perfect, the precious contents of its little ark are 
secured from the action of the element which is to be the 
theatre of their first state of existence, from the voracity 
of fishes, or the more rapacious larve of its own tribe, 
until the included eggs are hatched, and emerge from 
their curious cradle. 
I shall next amuse you with a few instances, in which 
the Allwise Creator instructs the parent insect, instead 
of defending her eggs with a covering furnished by her 
internal organs, to provide it from without, either from 
her own body or from some other substance. Most 
commonly, indeed, the female leaves her cluster of eggs 
without any other covering than the varnish with which 
in this case they are usually besmeared. Either they are 
deposited in summer and will soon be hatched, or they 
are of a substance calculated to encounter and resist the 
severities of the season. But many species, whose eggs 
are more tender or have to resist the cold and wet of 
winter, defend them in the most ingenious manner with 
a clothing of different kinds of substance. 
Cassida viridis, a tortoise beetle, Rosel tells us, covers 
her group of eggs with a partially transparent membrane. 
Arctia Salicis, a moth, common on willows, wholly con- 
ceals hers with a white frothy substance, which when 
dry is partly friable and partly cottony, and being inso- 
luble in water effectually protects them from the weather’. 
The female of Lophyrus Pini (a saw-fly), having by 
means of her double saw made a suitable longitudinal 
incision in the leaf of a fir, and placed in it her eggs in a 
® De Geer 1. 192. 
