698 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXIII. 
mined to take charge of them ourselves, and to make use of 
her to settle by dissection various anatomical and physiological 
questions that had arisen. 
From the evidence at hand, then, there can be no doubt that 
Autodax lays its eggs not only in the earth, but in earth that 
may be very dry; that at least most of the development of the 
embryo takes place after the eggs are laid; and that the female 
parent remains with her eggs most of the time during the 
development of the embryo. 
For what purpose the female tends her eggs is not entirely 
clear, but it is almost certain that one end attained is the 
maintenance in them of the high degree of moisture essential 
to their development. We supposed, on receiving the embryos 
and learning of the place where they had been found, that it 
would be necessary, in order to insure their further develop- 
ment, to place them under conditions of temperature and dry- 
ness similar to those by which they had been surrounded in 
nature. We consequently prepared a terrarium with this end 
in view, but greatly to our surprise and consternation, on the 
following morning we found the eggs much shriveled and most 
of the embryos either dead or nearly so; and it was only by 
placing them in water and allowing them to remain there for 
an hour or more that we succeeded in restoring any of them 
to their former healthy, active state. Four embryos returned 
to full vigor; and by keeping these on damp earth, and 
thoroughly wetting them at least twice a day, they continued 
to develop apparently in a perfectly normal way, to the time of 
hatching, which was September 13, or about fifty days after 
they were taken. 
How do the eggs in nature get the large amount of mois- 
ture necessary to their life and development? Through a long 
series of observations made under the direction of Professor E. 
W. Hilgard of the Agricultural Department of the University 
of California, during the past extremely dry season, it has been 
proven that plants draw moisture from the soil after a degree 
of dryness has been reached, which has generally been believed 
to be incapable of yielding any moisture to vegetation; t.e., 
after microscopic water is no longer present. It may be that 
