LOCUSTS. 278 
and beginning of July has been recorded as a typical one. The first specimens 
from this district were received in the Museum on the 30th June. The 
females were found on dissection to have their ovaries in an altogether rudi- 
mentary condition. On 7th July a number of living specimens were forwarded 
from the same locality. These were carefully fed ina cage in the Museum, 
and from time to time a specimen was dissected ; but up to the 7th of August, 
when the last specimen died and was dissected, though the growth which had 
taken place in the ova was very distinctly perceptible, yet there did not appear 
to be the slightest probability of the insects being ready :to oviposit for a 
long time to come, The impossibility of keeping the locusts in a healthy con- 
dition in confinement renders the deductions drawn from caged specimens 
necessarily unreliable. So far, however, as the evidence can be depended 
upon, it goes to show that the later broods are not the offspring of the young 
locusts hatched in the early part of the year. The question would be an easy 
one to solve for any one who lived on the borders of the deserts of Western 
Rajputana, where the insect is constantly to be found. All that would be 
necessary would be to dissect the insects present from day to day, and to trace 
the growth of the ovaries throughout the year. It may be suggested that the 
matter is one that might reasonably be taken up by some of the medical 
officers who are resident in the areas concerned. 
With regard to the parentage of the eggs which are so often laid in the 
Punjab towards the close of the winter rains, it has been ascertained that eggs 
can be laid at this time by locusts which were themselves hatched in the pre- 
ceding rains. Winged locusts from a flight which passed over Calcutta in 
November, 1890, and which had almost certainly originated in eggs laid in 
Rajputana in the previous rains, were kept in a cage in the Museum and 
regularly fed. In the latter part of March, 1891, they began copulating, and 
on the 26th March a number of eggs were laid. The earth in the cage had 
been previously saturated with water, in imitation of the conditions that have 
been shown to be favourable to egg-laying ; but the insects seemed to be too 
sickly to dig holes in the ground and simply deposited them on the surface. 
Some of the locusts lived on after laying their eggs through a great part of 
April ; but by the 4th of May they were all found to have died, while the eggs 
they had laid dried up and came to nothing. Very much the same experience 
is detailed by Colonel Powlett, Resident, Western Rajputana States, who 
writes in a report, dated 24th April, 1891, received from the Agent to the Goy- 
ernor-General, Rajputana, through the Government of India :— 
“* At and about Jodhpore most of the young brood of locusts appeared early in August, 
When this brood got wings in September, I caught some hundreds and put them in cages 
and had them regularly fed ; they died off, and by February there were less than twenty 
left, but two pairs of these were observed to copulate. On the 24th and 25th February two 
females laid eggs. They were not healthy masses of eggs, and the females did not succeed 
in depositing them under the soil placed in the cages, nor have they hatched. But it is 
