THE EGGS OF INSECTS. 47 



Butterflies, reared as a trophy by some cruel enemy 

 of the tribe, just as a Red Indian of the last century 

 displayed his captured scalps. When the eggs, thus 

 stilted on their slender pinnacles, are hatched, the 

 empty shells still remain at the end of the filaments, 

 in which state they still more strongly resemble 

 some slender kind of cup-moss, for which many of 

 our old herbalists may easily have mistaken them. 



In many cases we are not able to follow the 

 intentions of Nature in her apparent eccentricities 

 and curious arrangements of this kind, but in the 

 present instance they are sufficiently obvious. The 

 arrangement has been evidently resorted to in order 

 to place the eggs out of the reach of insects infest- 

 ing the leaves of the plant on which they are placed, 

 and which would otherwise have preyed upon them. 

 The contrivance bears a strong analogy to that 

 adopted by some tropical birds to protect their nests 

 from the depredations of serpents likely to prey upon 

 their eggs, which consists in weaving together long 

 slender fibres, by means of which the nest is sus- 

 pended at a considerable distance below some far 

 stretching branch, and quite out of the reach of the 

 wily enemy. 



Some insect eggs, instead of being attached to 

 the ends of long filaments for safety, have several 



