ME. LUBBOCK ON THE OVA AND PSEUDOVA OE INSECTS. 
.353 
The latter part of this paper will contain a full account of the formation of the egg 
in C. hesperidum, to which therefore I need not here allude in greater detail. 
In Forficula auricularia the egg-tubes are short and very numerous ; each contains a 
large egg more or less mature, and two or three small rudimentary ones. The large 
egg is pear-shaped, and the other two germs, together with the membrane containing 
them, may not unfitly be compared to the stalk. 
The large egg-germs consist of two parts. The posterior part consists of the yelk, 
and encloses the germinal vesicle ; the yelk-mass contains dark granules and small oil- 
globules. The anterior part is lighter, browner, more homogeneous, and appears to con- 
sist of a single large vitelligenous cell. In this anterior portion several vermiform 
masses may be perceived, but I am unwilling at present to offer any suggestion as to 
their origin and functions. At first the anterior portion occupies the larger portion of 
the egg-chamber, but the posterior portion grows both absolutely and relatively larger, 
until at length it fills almost, or altogether, the whole of the egg-chamber. I believe 
that I am correct in considering the anterior portion as a yelk-cell, but I was never 
able to see the nucleus. 
The terminal, smaller part of the egg- tube is not represented in Wiedemann’s ‘Archiv 
fur Zoologie et Zootomie,’ Bd. xi. tab. Ill ; it has, however, been described by Stein*. 
It consists of two or three egg-germs, each situated in a chamber which is separated 
from the next by a rather slight constriction, and each consisting of two parts, the 
posterior or egg-cell, and the anterior or \itelligenous cell. Sometimes, however, there 
were two vitelligenous cells to each egg-cell. In some of the more advanced of these 
egg-germs an indistinctly bordered granular nucleus was visible. This small terminal 
portion of the egg-tube is bent down on to the large egg, so that it might easily be 
overlooked. At an earlier period in the summer, as for instance in July, the difference 
of size between the last and penultimate egg-germs is not nearly so decided as it 
becomes towards the end of August. 
M. Leon Dufoue also, in his paper on the Forjiculidce^^ has overlooked the small ter- 
minal chambers of the egg-tube, which consequently he considers as consisting of only one 
egg-chamber. In the same paper he describes and figures the ovary of Labidura gigantea, 
which differs in the most remarkable manner from that of Forficula auricularia^ and con- 
sists of five long egg-tubes enclosing twenty, or a lesser number of egg-germs. It is 
impossible to determine, either from the description or the figure, upon what type the 
egg-germ is formed, but there is no reason to suppose that the process is different from 
that which occurs in the small species. 
It is very interesting to meet with such an important difference in the ovaries of two 
species which are in other respects so nearly allied, and to find thus in Forficula a type 
of ovary entirely different either from the Coleoptera on the one hand, or the Orthoptera 
on the other. If the terminal chamber is really absent, Labidura gigantea resembles 
the latter order rather than the former. 
* Loc. cit. p. 39. 
f Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1828, p. 358. 
