INSECTS' EGGS 135 



average man consumes more of these "interest- 

 ing objects " than he observes. 



Insects' eggs vary greatly in number. Some 

 insects deposit, perhaps, only fifteen or twenty, 

 while, on the other hand, some of the social in- 

 sects — bees, ants, termites — lay many thousands. 

 Taking the termites, or white ants, as an example, 

 Smeathman says that, owing to the number of 

 eggs which she produces, the abdomen of the 

 queen termite increases "to such an enormous 

 size that an old queen will have it increase to 

 fifteen hundred or two thousand times the bulk 

 of the rest of her body." When this preposterous 

 egg-bag commences to lay, she deposits eggs at the 

 rate of about sixty per minute, so that she lays 

 probably about 43,200 eggs in a day, and she con- 

 tinues at the work for many days. Insects usually 

 deposit their eggs with rapidity and then die, many 

 familiar moths expiring after laying only about 

 one hundred eggs, although some produce consider- 

 ably more. For example, the common large yellow 

 underwino- moths, which trouble the collector so 

 much by their abundance when he is " sugaring" 

 the trees for choicer game, lay their small yellow- 

 ish eggs on almost every sort of plant, from 

 grasses upwards, in batches of from six to eight 

 hundred. 



In addition to this amazing fecundity, several 



