THE SMALL SKIPPER 
363 
After flying with a slow, steady buzzing flight in and out 
among the taller grass stems, the butterfly now and again 
settled for a moment on a stem, but this not being suitable 
for her eggs, she would fly off and settle on another. If 
suitable, she would settle on the upper sheath and immediately 
slide down, tail first, and at once start feeling for the division 
along the sheath with her ovipositor, and then slowly creep 
upwards until she found the exact place for depositing, in 
the choice of which she seemed 
most particular. She then 
rested with wings closed over 
her back, antennae lowered in 
a line with her body and the 
abdomen curved, with the ex¬ 
tremity closely pressed on or 
just in the crevice of the sheath, 
and the ovipositor deeply in¬ 
serted. In this attitude she 
remained for three or four 
minutes. While thus resting 
she laid four eggs in a row 
along the inner surface of the 
sheath opposite the aperture, 
quite hidden from view. The 
other two females I watched 
laid three eggs each. In other 
sheaths I gathered and ex¬ 
amined, I found fourteen more 
eggs, all laid in rows in three 
different sheaths, numbering 
five, five, and four respectively; therefore, apparently the 
normal number laid at a time is from three to five. 
The egg measures at its greatest diameter o^ mm. It is 
of a compressed oval form. The micropyle is rather sunken 
and finely reticulated ; the rest of the surface is covered with 
extremely fine reticulations of an irregular network pattern, 
which is visible only in a high light ; otherwise the surface 
appears smooth and glistening with rather an opalescent 
lustre. When first laid and for some days after, the egg is 
pearly-white, faintly tinged with primrose-yellow ; it then 
The Small Skipper at rest. 
Sketched from life. 
