ENTOMOLOGICAL. 47 



contain a supply of food stored up for the young, which 

 is gradually exhausted as the young develop. The 

 carbo-hydrates and nitrogenous materials in the seed are 

 consumed by the young plant just as the yolk of the egg 

 is consumed by the hatching of the chicken. 



Some insects lay an incredible number of eggs. 

 Many people are heard to exclaim, " Where do the flies 

 come from ? Bother the flies ! " Let us follow the calcula- 

 tion of a student of this branch of natural history,* who 

 tells us that Mistress Musca domeslica, the common 

 house-fly, for example, deposits eighty eggs at a sitting, 

 and that she performs this operation four times during 

 her life ; and he shows, in a curious table, how, in one 

 season, one single female may thus be the progenitrix of 

 upwards of ten millions of flies ! 



You must see the eggs of some of the parasites which 

 infest various animals, and you will be surprised at their 

 beauty and variety. Now compare the egg of the house- 

 fly with that of the domestic bug ; the former is exactly 

 like the exquisitely carved ivory boxes of the Chinese, 

 while the latter glitters with exquisite chasing as on 

 mother of pearl. 



You will change your mind, I think, when we come 

 to our story about the house-fly's enemy, the garden 

 spider, if you think there is nothing to admire in the 

 latter. But let us dismiss this brief reference to the 

 beauty of insects' eggs by taking a peep at those of a 

 spider. You will observe that they are perfectly round, 

 without any of the external sculpture which renders the egg 

 of an insect so beautiful. Eemember that the spider is 

 not a true insect any more than a scorpion is ; both belong 

 to the same family, but more of that presently. 



The germ of spider-life in the egg appears in the 

 * Keller, quoted by Samuelson. 



