304 OTHER HEN-LIKE INSECTS. 



with, upon one of the yellow petals, which, directly afterward?, 

 was attacked, at the bitten edge, by the tender jaws of one of 

 her surrounding brood, thus led, apparently, to the repast which 

 she seemed to have prepared for their more easy discussion. 



The egg-bearing water-scorpion displays even more attach- 

 ment for her eggs than birds, for she never leaves them until 

 hatched, carrying them always in a cluster on her back. The 

 cochineal insects, of which one species affords the well-known 

 dye, protect their eggs by covering them with their own life- 

 less bodies. Some of these little animals, with their eggs thus 

 curiously guarded, and embedded in a white cottony secre- 

 tion, are to be found on grape-vines, too commonly for the 

 gardener, especially near London. The hawthorn furnishes, 

 in another coccus, another instance of frequent occurrence, 

 in which the body of the mother insect, dried to a silvery 

 grey skin, is to be seen protecting from winter's cold a multi- 

 tude of her orange-coloured eggs. 



The two habitudes last named bear, certainly, most of the 

 instinctive character, but at all events they are poetic in idea. 

 Perhaps, however, none of the maternal traits above noted 

 are so strongly marked as those wont to be exhibited by a 

 species of spider common under clods of earth, and often seen 

 carrying her eggs in a white silken bag fastened to the end of 

 her body. " No miser," says Kirby, " clings to his treasure 

 with more solicitude than this spider to her bag. She carries 

 it with her everywhere. If you deprive her of it, she makes 

 the most strenuous efforts for its recovery. If you restore it, 

 her actions demonstrate her joy. She seizes it, and with the 

 utmost agility runs off with it to a place of security. 



" When the proper time arrives, she makes an opening in 

 the bag for the young to come forth, when they run in clusters 

 on her back and legs ; she carries them about with her, and 

 feeds them till able to help themselves." 1 



Bonnet's relation concerning an individual of the same 



1 " Introduction to Entomology." 



