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louse hatched this year at least ten days earlier than usual. But 
all years are sufficiently hot in mid-summer, and all the stages 
of these insects are accomplished with great rapidity. By the 
30th of July many of the eggs of this second brood had hatched, 
and by the end of the first week of August about half of the eggs 
under each scale had hatched, and the young had fixed them¬ 
selves upon the nearest leaflets, many of them settling upon the 
same leaflet on which they were hatched. 
And now began to be apparent one of the most remarkable pe¬ 
culiarities in the history of these singular insects. Up to this 
period—about the seventh of August—nearly or quite all the 
eggs that had hatched, and which appeared to have been that 
portion of them which had been first deposited, and which conse¬ 
quently lay farthest from the insect’s body and nearest the end of 
the scale, had produced only male insects, clearly indicated by 
the development of the small linear scales. After this period, as 
the remaining eggs gradually hatched, a sprinkling of the broad¬ 
er female scales began to appear ; a few mingling with the male 
scales upon the same leaflet on which they had hatched, or the 
leaflets next adjacent, but the most of them migrating outwards 
upon the young or terminal whorl of leaves, on which no male in¬ 
sect was to be seen. And here remark the wonderful instinct 
displayed by these creatures, which are usually considered as oc¬ 
cupying almost the lowest rank in the insect scale. The males, 
which will remain attached to the leaf but a short time, and 
which will soon acquire wings with which to transport themselves 
whithersoever they desire, attach themselves indifferently upon 
the first vacant space they can find, whilst the females, whose 
power of locomotion is limited to the first two or three days of 
their existence, improve this transient period to spread out upon 
the terminal foliage where they will find a fresh supply of nutri¬ 
ment, and in this way each succeeding generation comes into ex¬ 
istence where it will find the easiest access to the youngest and 
freshest foliage. Amongst the many wonderful provisional in¬ 
stincts of insects, this is by no means the least remarkable. But 
wonderful and beautiful as all this is, so far as the insects are con¬ 
cerned, it is precisely that course of procedure which is most 
fatal to the tree. The eggs which produce females, and which, as 
we have seen, do not begin to hatch till about two weeks later 
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