amount may be said to be not uncommon. Aleyrodes proletella, a small hemipteron, is the only recorded insect, except the white ant, that makes any approach to the last named number, and even it does not exceed 200,000. An insect resembling an ant, possibly a Mutilla, is said to have laid 80,000 in one day. The queen bee may occasionally produce 50,000 eggs in a season, but the ordinary amount does not exceed 5000 or 6000. The female wasp sometimes lays about 30,000, but commonly not more than 2000 or 3000; cocci between 2000 and 4000; some moths a thousand or upwards; but in far the greater number of instances, even in regard to the more prolific kinds, the number may be expressed by three figures; and, in the vast majority of cases, the eggs certainly do not amount to a hundred. Generally speaking, carnivorous species are least prolific, and herbivorous ones most so; an ordination in harmony with the supply of food, which is limited and precarious in the former case, constant and almost inexhaustible in the latter.
Our acquaintance with the composition both of the exterior and interior parts of insects' eggs, is far from being complete. The integument generally offers but little resistance, being a mere membrane, not unfrequently so transparent as to reveal the changes that take place within; at other times it is hard, dense, and opaque. The former is the case with eggs deposited in the earth, (as takes place in many Coleoptera, Orthoptera, and Hemiptera,) the moisture and protection of which are probably indispensable for preventing the
