20 TRUE TALES OF THE INSECTS. 



resistant, and tears only with difficulty, and is imper- 

 meable to water. It may be plunged into liquid without 

 the eggs being injured, so admirable the closure of the 

 opercular scales one upon the other. 



It is not easy to understand how the mantis, simply 

 by the act of laying, contrives to form a structure so 

 wonderfully regular, and so complicated as this capsule ; 

 it would be a clever bit of work were it built by the 

 mouth and feet, but fashioned as it is, it appears a con- 

 juror's trick. The insect begins to establish the edifice 

 at the large end ; and whilst the viscous matter flows, 

 the abdomen is caused to assume a circular, undulatory 

 motion, ceaselessly working up the gummy mass, and 

 arranging it in the successive concave layers. It 

 must be supposed that for each layer she at first dis- 

 charges the eggs clothed, as it were, in gummy stuff, 

 which in drying hardens, and becomes the central 

 horny sac, and then to right and left she deposits a 

 viscid fluid less strong, known to us eventually in its 

 solidified state in the shape of the lateral foamy cells. 



Curiously enough, the eggs at the small end of the 

 ootheca hatch first, although these were the last deposited. 



The European Ameles, small mantidse which likewise 

 inhabit the Mediterranean basin, have prismatic capsules, 

 about two centimetres long, composed of a most neat 

 series of triangular cells, each enclosing six or seven 

 eggs, almost destitute of lateral cellular tissue. 



