11 
used for ovipositing by the female, while on well- traveled roads she sel- 
dom gets time to fulfill the act without being disturbed. Thus a well- 
traveled road may present the appearance of being perfectly honey- 
combed with holes, when an examination will show that most of them 
are unfinished and contain no eggs ; whereas a field covered with grass 
stubble may show no signs of such holes and yet abound with eggs. 
In fact, wherever holes are noticed, it may generally be taken for 
granted that they contain no eggs, for the mother covers well the hole 
when she has time to properly complete her task. 
Furthermore, the insects are more readily noticed at their work along 
roads and roadsides than in fields ; a fact which has also had something 
to do in forming the popular impression. Xewly plowed land is not 
liked ; it presents too loose a surface ; but newly broken sward is often 
filled with eggs. Moist or wet ground is generally avoided for the pur- 
pose under consideration. 
We have noticed that in the permanent breeding region, wherever 
the vegetation is scant, the females show a decided preference for the 
shaded base of shrubby plants, among the roots of which they like to 
place their eggs 5 whereas in the temporary region, where the vegeta- 
tion is generally so much ranker, exposed situations, or those compara- 
tively bare of vegetation, are preferred. The experience of 1876 proved 
very conclusively, also, that they are instinctively guided toward culti- 
vated fields, where the young will find good pasturage ; for the eggs 
were noticeably thickest and hatched most numerously in 1S77 in culti- 
vated areas. In the Cypress Hills region of British America, as Mr. 
J. Gr. Kittson informs us, the high lands and protected slopes of the 
hills are preferred. The soil of the mountain region, where the insects 
permanently breed, is mostly of a compact, scantily covered, gravelly 
nature, and the notion that they lay most in pure sand is an erroneous 
one. 
Sandy soil that is compact, especially when having a south or east 
exposure, is much chosen, but in loose and shifting sand the eggs would 
perish. In 1876, it was generally remarked that the insects were more 
indifferent than usual in ovipositing, and that eggs were much more fre- 
quently laid in low, and even wet, land than in former years. 
The mass seldom reaches more than an inch below the surface, except 
where some vegetable root has been followed down and devoured, and 
the insect leaves her eggs before emerging 5 in this way the mass is 
sometimes placed a foot below the surface. In abnormal or unhealthy 
conditions, the eggs may be laid in exposed places without any hole, in 
which case they doubtless never give birth to young. In other cases, 
the female will fill her hole almost entirely with the sebific matter. ^Nor 
are the eggs invariably laid in the ground, for while we know of no ex- 
ceptions to this normal position in spretus, yet Mr. Boll informs us that 
around Dallas, Tex., in 1876, the eggs of differentialis were very numer- 
ously placed under the bark of elm and hackberry logs that had been 
