F. B. Browne 359 
like a conjuring trick to see the comparatively enormous egg appear from the 
exceedingly fine tube. 
The egg shoots out more or less horizontally and lies on the surface of 
the host, its long axis, as it lies, corresponding more or less closely with that 
of the Melittobia. Sometimes one of the middle legs seems to be used to guide 
the egg as it emerges. 
Within about half a minute another egg may be laid alongside the first 
and as many as 7 or 8 eggs may be laid in one spot within 5 or 6 minutes. 
A large number of eggs may ultimately become massed together at one spot 
or the female may scatter her eggs over the surface, but where she is ovipositing 
through a cocoon or puparium the eggs are almost invariably laid in heaps. 
VI. The Habits of the Male. 
(a) General habits. 
I have said that, as a rule, the males emerge first in the cells. These males 
are very active; they creep over and amongst the larvae and pupae, even 
seizing them in their jaws and thus moving them about, though I have never 
seen a male injure a larva or pupa. 
Two males, on meeting, usually engage in mortal combat, though when 
a cell is very full of emerging females the males are so busy that they seem 
to pay less attention to one another. 
So far as I can find the males do not feed. 
I have paid but little attention to the length of life of the male, but in 
those cases where a male has been introduced into a cell containing a female, 
the former has usually succumbed within seven days. In these cases, however, 
I have no record of the age of the male when he was introduced into the , 
female cell but in one case I found a male alive twenty days after introduction, 
the female having died—or having been killed by the male—within 24 hours 
after his introduction. It is possible that inability to fulfil the sexual function 
may prolong life as in the case of the female. (See section upon “Longevity of 
the Female,” p. 363.) Smith, F. (1853) says that the male usually lives about 
seven weeks. 
The killing of the female by the male was, unfortunately, a not uncommon 
occurrence and on several occasions stopped experiments of some importance. 
Whether or not this is a phenomenon caused by the experimental conditions 
it is, of course, impossible to say. 
(b) Courting. 
Courting is a strange phenomenon in that a special contact is made between 
the antennae of the male and female as a preliminary to copulation. The male 
mounts upon the back of the female and moves forward, seeking for her 
antennae, the apices of which he ultimately succeeds in getting into the 
pocket on the underside of the long scape segment of his antennae ( v. Plate 
XXVI, fig. 1 a and b). 
