are almost equidistant and lie very nearly in a straight line. Their
number varies; it is small when the mother, disturbed in her operations,
has flown away to continue her work elsewhere; but they number thirty or
forty, more or less, when they contain the whole of her eggs.

Each one of the perforations is the entrance to an oblique tunnel, which
is bored in the medullary sheath of the twig. The aperture is not
closed, except by the bunch of woody fibres, which, parted at the moment
when the eggs are laid, recover themselves when the double saw of the
oviduct is removed. Sometimes, but by no means always, you may see
between the fibres a tiny glistening patch like a touch of dried white
of egg. This is only an insignificant trace of some albuminous secretion
accompanying the egg or facilitating the work of the double saw of the
oviduct.

Immediately below the aperture of the perforation is the egg chamber: a
short, tunnel-shaped cavity which occupies almost the whole distance
between one opening and that lying below it. Sometimes the separating
partition is lacking, and the various chambers run into one another, so
that the eggs, although introduced by the various apertures, are
arranged in an uninterrupted row. This arrangement, however, is not the
most usual.

The contents of the chambers vary greatly. I find in each from six to
fifteen eggs. The average is ten. The total number of chambers varying
from thirty to forty, it follows that the Cigale lays from three to four
hundred eggs. Réaumur arrived at the same figures from an examination of
the ovaries.

This is truly a fine family, capable by sheer force of numbers of