34 



deposit their eggs on the outside, and only occasionally is an infertile 

 egg deposited normally, though the attempt is regularly made to do 

 so. The number of such eggs which may be found is greatly dimin- 

 ished by the following peculiar habit, which was observed many times. 

 Occasionally it appeared that the puncture which the female had made 

 for the reception of an egg was too narrow to receive it, and after a 

 prolonged attempt to force it down, the female would withdraw her 

 ovipositor, leaving the egg at the surface. She would then turn 

 immediately and devour the egg. After that, seeming conscious of 

 her failure and aware of the cause of it, she would proceed to find and 

 enlarge somewhat the cavity previously made. When this was com- 

 pleted she would attempt to place another egg therein. The second 

 attempt was usually successful, but in one or two cases a female was 

 seen to fail several times, and in more than half of these cases she ate 

 the eggs, as has been described. 



PERCENTAGE OF EGGS THAT HATCH. 



Definite records were not kept upon this point, but in the many 

 hundreds of eggs followed during these observations very few failed 

 to hatch, though some were much slower in embryonic development 

 than were others laid at the same time and by the same female. It is 

 the writer's general impression that less than 1 per cent of the eggs 

 are infertile or fail to hatch. 



THE LAEVA. 



DESCRIPTION. 



The 3'oung larva, upon hatching from the Qgg^ is a delicate, white, 

 legless grub of about 1 mm. (g\ inch) in length. Except for the 

 brown head and dark brown mandibles, the young larva is at first as 

 inconspicuous as the egg from which it came. As it feeds and grows 

 it continues to enlarge a place for itself in the square or boll until 

 the food supply has become exhausted or the vegetable tissues are so 

 changed as to be unsuitable for food. By this time, as a rule, the 

 interior of the square has been almost entirely consumed and the larval 

 castings are spread thickly over the walls of the cavity (PL III, fig. 10). 

 This layer becomes firmly compacted by the frequent turning of the 

 larva as it nears the end of this stage. In the cell thus formed occur 

 the marked changes from the legless grub to the fully formed and 

 perfect beetle (PI. I, figs. 4, 5, and 6). 



Throughout this stage the body of the larva preserves a ventraliy- 

 curved, crescentic form (PL I, fig. 4). The color is white, modified 

 somewhat by the dark color of the body contents, which show through 

 the thinner, almost transparent, portions of the body wall. The dor- 

 sum is strongly wrinkled or corrugated, while the venter is quite 



