Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/38

 hatching. There are, however, species not thus insured, and these do suffer losses from fall hatching every time winter makes a late arrival. Eggs laid in the spring are designed to hatch the same season, and the eggs of species that live in warm climates never require freezing for their development.

The tough shell of the grasshopper's egg is composed of two distinct coats, an outer, thicker, opaque one of a pale brown color, and an inner one which is thin and transparent. Just before hatching, the outer coat splits open in an irregular break over the upper end of the egg, and usually half or two-thirds of the way down the flat side. This outer coat can easily be removed artificially, and the inner coat then appears as a glistening capsule, through the semitransparent walls of which the little grasshopper inside can be seen, its members all tightly folded beneath its body. When the hatching takes place normally, however, both layers of the eggshell are split, and the young grasshopper emerges by slowly making its way out of the cleft (Fig. 6). Newly-hatched grasshoppers that have come out of eggs which some meddlesome investigator has removed from their pods for observation very soon proceed to shed an outer skin from their bodies. This skin, which is already loosened at the time of hatching, appears now as a rather tightly fitting garment that cramps the soft legs and feet of the delicate creature within it. The latter, however, after a few forward heaves of the body, accompanied by expansions of two swellings on the back of the neck (Fig. 6), succeeds in splitting the skin over the neck and the back of the head, and the pellicle then rapidly shrinks and slides down over the body. The insect, thus first exposed,