The White-faced Decticus: his Habits 



is seen to issue, in painful labour, something 

 monstrous and unheard-of, as though the 

 creature were expelling its entrails in a lump. 



It is an opalescent bag, similar in size and 

 colour to a mistletoe-berry, a bag with four 

 pockets marked off by faint grooves, two 

 larger ones above and two smaller ones 

 below. In certain cases the number of cells 

 increases and the whole assumes the appear- 

 ance of a packet of eggs such as Helix 

 aspersa, the Common Snail, lays in the 

 ground. 



The strange concern remains hanging 

 from the lower end of the sabre of the future 

 mother, who solemnly retires with the ex- 

 traordinary wallet, the spermatophore, as 

 the physiologists call it, the source of life for 

 the ovules, in other words the cruet which 

 will now in due course transmit to the proper 

 place the necessary complement for the evo- 

 lution of the germs. 



A capsule of this kind is a rare, an in- 

 finitely rare thing in the world of to-day. So 

 far as I know, the Cephalopods 1 and the 

 Scolopendras 2 are, in our time, the only 



1 The class of molluscs containing the Squids, Cuttle- 

 fish, Octopus, etc. Translator's Note. 



" A genus of Myriapods including the typical Centi- 

 pedes. Translator's Note. 



223 



