A QUEER LITTLE FAMILY ON THE BITTERSWEET 95 



source. These tufts are pure white, a little over 

 an eighth of an inch in length, and semicircular 

 in vertical outline. The natural presumption is 

 the idea of maternity, the mother hopper guard- 

 ing her bundles of white eggs, or her infant hop- 

 pers, perhaps, snugly tucked up in their downy 

 swaddling-clothes. But a closer examination 

 completely dispels this illusion. Instead of the 

 supposed fluffy cotton, we now discover the 

 white substance to be of firm though somewhat 

 sticky consistency, its surface, moreover, beautiful- 

 ly ridged from base to summit in parallel rounded 

 flutings, which meet and interfold like a braid 

 along the summit. If with a sharp knife we now 

 cut downward through and across the mass, we 

 find our tuft to be a mere frothy shell containing 

 two hollow compartments, with a thin central par- 

 tition extending through the whole length of the 

 cavity. But there is no sign of an egg or other 

 life to be disclosed anywhere, either in its sub- 

 stance or its concealment. What, then, is the 

 office of this tiny fragile house of congealed foam, 

 with its snowy aerated structure, its double arched 

 chambers, its corrugated walls and ceilings, and 

 missing tenant or host? Such was the riddle 

 which it propounded to me, and guided by some 

 previous knowledge of the habits of allied insects, 



