THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 261 
appearance becomes so inorganic that even the sharp, prying 
eye of a bird would be deceived, and the delicate, discrimi- 
nating touch of a spider would fail to detect life under this 
mask of death. Some insects have a special provision for 
this maneuvre; as in those many-bladed knives which are 
the delight of schoolboys and the terror of timid mothers, 
each of the limbs fits with the greatest nicety into a groove 
purposely fashioned to receive it. If you examine a pill- 
beetle (Byrrbus), while it is shamming death in this way, you 
will find it so compact and pill-like that you are quite unable 
to distinguish the legs from the body until the creature 
condescends to crawl, and thus reveal the secrets of its 
structure. Notwithstanding this love of concealment, one or 
other of the roving males, similarly coloured to the female, 
but of a far more volatile disposition, is sure to find her, and 
impregnation and maternity follow as matters of course. 
Then she may be seen in the act of oviposition,—on a sloe- 
leaf in the hedges, or a cherry-Jeaf in the garden, or a pear- 
leaf in the orchard,—and a serious matter she makes of it. 
So serious and so intent is she in the performance of this 
maternal duty, that you may sometimes take her off the sloe- 
leaf between your finger and thumb. She will evince no 
disposition to fly, make no effort to run, but only resort to the 
expedient of feigning death,—an expedient that facilitates 
her capture rather than otherwise, especially if you hold one 
hand beneath the leaf on which she is operating, in order to 
arrest her fall. I need scarcely say that this insect is a 
member of the great family of sawflies,—a family that has 
long attracted the attention and admiration of the entomolo- 
gist; nor need [ again describe the saw with which all of 
them seem to abrade the cuticle of the leaf, leaf-stalk, or 
twig, on which they deposit their eggs. 
Suffice it to say that the abrasion made by the insect 
whose history I am relating is of a’ slightly-curved or 
crescentic form, and that the egg is laid in this abraded 
portion. The denuded parenchyma of the leaf thus comes 
into immediate contact with the under side of the egg, which 
is of an oblong shape, and is covered with a leathery shell, 
capable of considerable expansion as the enclosed larva 
increases in size. Thus the egg is seen very obviously to 
grow,—a fact familiar to entomologists, but one which 
