WATER-SCORPIONS. 19 



floating, dead. Mrs. Scorpion-Bug evidently ob- 

 jects to being monarch of all she surveys. 



Some scorpion-bugs carry merely a few eggs, 

 and do not cover their backs entirely. One of 

 my scorpion-bugs used to go wandering around 

 the bottle carrying half-a-dozen eggs or so as a 

 kind of epaulette on her right shoulder, the rest 

 of her back being bare. A full covering of eggs 

 makes a scorpion look as though she had the un- 

 even, brown outside of an acorn-cup on her back. 

 One finds these cast-off egg-foundations in the 

 water. The eggs do not seem to be very tightly 

 fastened to the bug's back, and hitting against 

 other beetles or pieces of wood loosens the egg- 

 mass till it comes off whole and floats in the 

 water. 



If one of these egg-burdened bugs dies, the 

 egg-mass may easily be separated from her back, 

 but I do not think that the eggs will hatch. At 

 least, my experiments in trying to keep such eggs 

 till hatching have proved unsuccessful. Occa- 

 sionally I have found in the jar on a stick eggs 

 of the same shape evidently deposited by other 

 scorpion - bugs. The baby scorpion - bugs are 

 miniatures of their parents, looking a little like 

 a lot of infant squash -bugs that had suddenly 

 taken a fancy to swimming. Once in a while 

 one will see a youthful bug catch a tadpole half 

 as big as himself. Mosquito- wrigglers form part 

 of the bill of fare also. 



