224 ■ MR. A. BI. ALTSON ON THE METHOD OY 
eggs, after the manner of oviposition was established, proved far from 
satisfactory and extremely laborious owing to the mass of wood which had 
to be cut away from the sides to shave down those parts to get near the 
vessels which had been opened transversely and accessible to the beetles. 
And so another and entirely successful method was adopted. 
Glass-topped tins were used as cages. Into (hese small pieces o£ 
mahogany were put for the beetles to oviposit in. The sizes, of these 
pieces, which were split on all faces longitudinally with the vessels, and 
cut transversely at the ends, ranged from 1 to 2 inches in length by one- 
eighth to about three-eighths of an inch in width and thickness. 
The search for the eggs in these pieces was carried out as above and wa'» 
mainly confined to the extremities, unless a vessel had been fractured in 
splitting or bitten open by a beetle. 
No attempt was made to find eggs in planks or in the "field." 
Note on Ltctus lineabis, Gobzb. 
As no living specimens of L. linearis were obtained, the writer's intention, 
to study the early stages of this insect with a view to critically examining 
the descriptions of the manner of oviposition and the egg as published 
by Noerdlinger (1855) and Xambeu (1898), did not materialise. 
Several writers since 1898 to 1920 have published corroborative accounts 
of Xambeu's description of the egg and manner of oviposition. But it has 
recently been found that in 1917 Hopkins and Snyder — after the hitter's 
discovery of the egg and manner of oviposition of L. jilanicollis — published 
a paper in which they described the life-histories of L. linearis, L. parallelo- 
pipedus, Melsh., L. cavicollis, Lee, and L. planicoUis, as being identical 
except as to the time of the emergence of the adults. The inference to be 
drawn is that the egg and manner of oviposition is similar in these four 
species and consequently similar to the egg and manner of oviposition of 
L. brunneus as described in this paper. 
Therefore Xambeu's description of a strandless egg deposited .in cracks, 
fissures, or crevices can no longer stand. 
It will probably be found that this method and manner of oviposition — 
depositing the eggs in the trachea3, vessels, or pores — is a generic charac- 
teristic of the wood-infesting Lyctus beetles. 
Conclusions. 
The phenomenon of the egg of L. brunneus is, so far as it has been 
possible to ascertain, unlike any case of embryological development recorded, 
not only in the records of Entomology, but in those of Zoology. as a whole ; 
a case in which within the egg is produced the young larva's initial food. 
The closest analogy found is that of a case of polyembryony discussed by 
Gatenby (1919) in a review on the early development of the egg and the 
