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1878. ] Zo0logy. | , 477 
‘inally we can remove the old cuticle without difficulty, a proof 
that it is cast off 72 Zoto. 
raun has maintained that the solid hairs and their modifications 
in the crop and fore stomach of the crawfish, are comparable with 
the cuticular hairs of the same animals; i. e. are merely for orna- 
mentation, but Wilde considers that the homologous spiny hairs 
in the crop of the Orthoptera triturate the food (their function is, 
_ however, evidently to prevent the food from regurgitating into 
the mouth, together with the peristaltic action of the crop and 
digestive canal). That these hairs lining the crop and fore-stomach 
are useful in throwing off the old cuticle is plain, but this is only 
a purely secondary use. Wilde says he has observed the process 
of moulting in Locusta viridissima, Decticus verrucivorus and Gryllus 
campestris in the clearest manner, favored in part by the peculiar 
inner structure of the crop in the last. All the hairs and hair-like 
growths in the crop and proventriculus of the Orthoptera, take 
their origin not from cell-tubes, as is mostly the case in Astacus, 
but they are in the Orthoptera much more solid, and originate - 
like spines on the chifine cells, like the projections on the flame- 
like cells (flammenzellen) of the walrus, as observed by F. E. 
Schulze. In no case is the moulting, in Orthoptera, performed as 
in Astacus and the reptiles, where two or three solid bristles are 
developed in a cell, by which the old cuticle is loosened. In the 
Orthoptera it rises simultaneously throughout its extent, so that 
the new cuticle rising under it, whether in the form of hairs or 
flattened, hairless chitinous growth, elevates the old cuticle as it 
keeps on growing (Fig. 23). As soon as the old cuticle is stripped 
_ off, the new cuticle completely formed is to be seen under it. It 
is, indeed, completely hyaline, and reminds one of the cuticle in 
the orthopterous larva, just after exclusion from the egg. Yet it 
takes on, after a few davs, probably through the influence of the 
air, which passes through very fine tracheal twigs under the layer 
of epithelium, the characteristic yellow-brown color of the chitine. 
The secretion of the new cuticle must proceed with great rapidity. 
It does not take more than one, or at least two days to develop. 
Wilde does not state how the cast chitinous lining of the crop 
and proventriculus passes out of the narrow cesophagus and 
pharynx. : 
ORNITHOLOGICAL Nores.—The habit of laying in other birds’ 
nests is a well-known peculiarity of the cow-blackbird (Molothrus 
ecoris Sw). , It seldom happens, however, that the intruder is 
Successful in depositing more than one egg in a nest, yet I found 
a grass-finch’s nest last summer which contained five eggs, three 
of which had been laid by the.cow-bird. On the plains of Colo- 
rado I have frequently found single eggs of the latter deposited 
On the bare ground, and this fact was accounted for by the 
absence of timber in which birds might find suitable conditions 
for nidification. In one day I picked up ‘wo eggs of the owo o o 2 
