68 STATES OF INSECTS. 



and seems only anxious how to free herself from a bur- 

 then that oppresses her; all has been contrived that an 

 insect so short-lived may finish her different operations 

 with the utmost celerity : the term of her existence would 

 not have admitted the leisurely extrusion of such a num- 

 ber of eggs in succession 3 . Some Trichoptera, or May- 

 flies, as Phryganea grandis L., exclude their eggs in a 

 double packet, enveloped in a mass of jelly, (a circum- 

 stance often attending the eggs that produce aquatic 

 larvae,) upon the leaves of willows' 3 . A similar double 

 packet in the year 1810 I observed appended to the anus 

 of a blaek species with long antennas, probably Phry- 

 ganea atrata F. c Upon taking several of the females I 

 was surprised to find in the above situation a seemingly 

 fleshy substance of a dirty yellow. At first, from its an- 

 nular appearance, I conceived it to be some parasitic 

 larva, but was not a little surprised upon pulling it away 

 that it was full of globular transparent dusky eggs : it 

 was about two lines and a quarter in length and nearly 

 one in breadth. Being bent double it was attached to 

 the animal by the intermediate angle, and when un- 

 folded was constricted in the middle d . Each half, which 

 was roundish, had about ten sharp transverse ridges, 

 the interstices of which appeared as if crenated, an ap- 

 pearance produced by the eggs which it contained. 

 Upon more than gentle pressure it burst and let out 

 the eggs. Though resembling the packet of P. grandis 

 in shape and other circumstances, it was nothing like 



a The vesicles, which Reaumur thinks may be pulmonary vesicles, 

 as well as assisting in the extrusion of the masses of eggs, he has 

 figured t. xliv./. 10. uu. 



b De Geer ii. 534. t. xiii./. 13. 



c Coquebert Illustr. Ic. t. If. A. B. 



* Plate XX. Fig. 25, 



