Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/35

 process brings no detritus to the surface, and gradually the end of the insect's body sinks deeper and deeper, until a considerable length of it is buried in the ground (Fig. 3).

Now all is ready for the discharge of the eggs. The exit duct from the tubes of the ovary, which are filled with eggs already ripe, opens just below and between the bases of the lower prongs of the ovipositor, so that, when the upper and lower prongs are separated, the eggs escape from the passage between them. While the eggs are being placed in the bottom of the well, a frothy gluelike substance from the body of the insect is discharged over them. This substance hardens about the eggs as it dries, but not in a solid mass, for its frothy nature leaves it full of cavities, like a sponge, and affords the eggs, and the young grasshoppers when they hatch, an abundance of space for air. To the outside of the covering substance, while it is fresh and sticky, particles of earth adhere and make a finely granular coating over the mass, which, when hardened, looks like a small pod or capsule that has been molded into the shape of the cavity containing it (Fig. 4). The number of eggs within each pod varies greatly, some pods coritaining only half a dozen eggs, and others as many as one hundred and fifty. Each female also deposits several batches of eggs, each lot in a separate burrow and pod, before her egg supply is exhausted. Some species arrange the eggs regularly in the pods, while others cram them in haphazard.