INSECTS. 
239 
sure, which is called an egg, and in which they 
continue for some time, she is said to be oviparous. 
Among the viviparous species, the enclosure where 
the germ is lodged is soft and delicate ; because, as 
the young is always invested with a cover while it 
continues in the womb of its mother, it is not re- 
quisite that the germ should have any stronger de- 
fence. In the oviparous kind, the covering which 
infolds the germ a little before the teeming of the 
dam, becomes a solid incrustation, to protect the 
young from the weight and injuries of the air, which 
rolls over the egg, as upon the surface of a vault, 
without occasioning the least prejudice to the tender 
animal that is lodged within. Most insects are of 
this last class, and are kept locked up in the egg 
during the winter. 
The various contrivances which the females em- 
ploy to secure their eggs from injury, and the care 
they take to deposit their little treasures in places 
where the future progeny may find subsistence, can- 
not be sufficiently admired. Many enclose their 
eggs in a web of the finest silk ; others cover them 
with hair, or glue them to the leaves upon which 
they have been deposited, or make incisions into 
the leaves themselves, and deposit an egg in every 
slit. Some make a hole in the earth, where they 
lay their eggs, and some envelop them in a soft 
substance which forms the first nutriment of the 
animal. If this attention to secure the egg from injury 
is any evidence of an all-directing power, how much 
more so is that instinct in the little animal, which 
