AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYRIAPODA. 
107 
sonably conclude that the act is of short duration, and that oviposition takes place 
very soon after impregnation. From the circumstance that many eggs are far ad- 
vanced when the animals are collected in the autumn, I at first supposed that season 
to be the proper period for depositing the eggs ; but the facts now about to be stated 
induce me to believe that this process takes place very early in the spring. 
In order to observe the habits of these animals, I collected from thirty to forty of 
them in the beginning of October, when they were preparing to liybernate, and 
placed them in a tin box, covered at the bottom with clay and sand mixed with vege- 
table mould, the soil in which they were captured. I fed them, according to the di- 
rections of Professor Waga in his interesting experiments*, with decaying leaves and 
slices of apple. In this way they were preserved perfectly healthy, and as winter ap- 
proached, gradually passed into a state of hybernation. At the end of December, 
when the weather was severe, and the temperature of the room in which my speci- 
mens were kept was between 30° Fahr. and 40° Fahr., they were collected together 
in a heap, each coiled up in a circle between the folds of dried leaves, as if in a per- 
fect state of hybernation. They were not aroused by the opening of the box. The 
temperature in which they had been kept, up to this time, had seldom been lower 
than 38° Fahr. On the 13th of January, when the temperature of the room was 
41° Fahr., some of them were in a much more complete state of hybernation. A few 
were still coiled up between the dried leaves, and on opening the box became slightly 
disturbed, and crawled about, very slowly ; but others had penetrated the moistened 
clay at the bottom of the box, each one having formed for itself a circular cavity, in 
which it lay coiled up in a spiral form, in a state of rest, from which it was aroused 
with much difficulty. In this situation they remained for many days of exceedingly 
cold weather, during which the temperature of the room in which they were placed 
was for some time so low as 28° Fahr. On the 24th of February they were still in 
the same state, some of them being coiled up between the leaves, while others re- 
mained in their circular holes in the clay. A few days after this, the weather having 
suddenly become warmer, they began to arouse from their hybernation, moved ac- 
tively about, and again took food. On the sixth of March they were still active and 
healthy, and, much to my satisfaction, I now discovered, in a little circular cavity at 
the bottom of one of the holes in the clay, a large packet of eggs, from sixty to seventy 
in number, that adhered loosely together, and seemed to have been very recently 
deposited. They were of a yellowish white colour, of an obtuse oval shape, and 
about the size of the seeds of the wild poppy, which they much resemble. A second 
packet of eggs was deposited in a similar manner bn the 25th of March, and subse- 
quently to this many other packets through the months of March, April and May, 
as was also observed by Professor Waga in his investigations ; so that the spring 
months seem to be the season of oviposition. 
The habits of Iulidse in regard to the deposition of their ova are somewhat peculiar. 
* Revue Zoologique, par la Societe Cuvierienne, No. 3, Mars 1839, p. 76. 
Q 
MDCCCXLI. 
