The Life of the Grasshopper 



an ordinary piece of game. In the space of 

 a fortnight I have seen the same female 

 marry again as many as seven times over. 

 Each time the easily-consoled widow ate up 

 her mate. Such habits make one assume re- 

 peated layings; and these do, in fact, take 

 place, though they are not the general rule. 

 Among my mothers, some gave me only one 

 nest; others supplied me with two, both 

 equally large. The most fertile produced 

 three, of which the first two were of normal 

 size, while the third was reduced to half 

 the usual dimensions. 



The last-mentioned insect shall tell us the 

 population which the Mantis' ovaries are 

 capable of producing. Reckoning by the 

 transversal furrows of the nest, we can easily 

 count the layers of eggs. These are more or 

 less rich according to their position at the 

 middle of the ellipsoid or at the ends. The 

 numbers of the eggs in the biggest and in 

 the smallest layer furnish an average from 

 which we can approximately deduce the total. 

 In this way I find that a good-sized nest con- 

 tains about four hundred eggs. The mother 

 with the three nests, the last of which was 

 only half the size of the others, therefore 

 left as her offspring no fewer than a thou- 

 164 



