"Let no one that is unacquainted with this study, suppose that there is any exaggeration in this account; or that what I have related, is done with a view to catch the opinion of the public. Far from it. Every adept knows it, and to every adept I would appeal.
"I have counted above three hundred eggs, contained in the bag of a spider; and I have observed more than that number laid by a water insect (Phryganea) on a blade of grass, by a river side. The moth, common in our gardens, named the Great Tiger (or Caja of Linnæus), lays above six hundred eggs; and almost double that number I have known discharged by a Long Legs, as it is called, or Tipula of Linnæus. Goedartius mentions two thousand worms that he plainly counted, springing from their parent insect, and imagines there were three thousand bred from the same animal.
From our information respecting the habits of the indigenous and European species of Fossorial Hymenopterous insects, including the Pelopæus spirifex, it is evident that the male takes no share in the labour of constructing the nest. See my memoirs upon this subject in the "Annales de la Société Entomologique de France," for 1836, and the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, vol. i. for the same year, and the Memoirs of Saint Fargeau and Shuckard therein referred to.
The presence of the dorsal wing cases indicates the arrival of the insect at the pupa state.
"The morning is the time they generally choose for completing this change, because I am pretty certain it is in their power to retard this regeneration considerably, if I can judge from concurrent circumstances attending those I have kept in glass bowls, on purpose to observe their nature and behaviour. In one of these I have seen two libella-caterpillars, that were fully grown, for three days successively creep up the straws out of the water, in order to undergo their transformation; but finding themselves deprived of the sun-shine, (a circumstance generally attending this performance,) or at least that agreeable warmth of air so necessary for their purpose, they retired into the water: in an hour's time they made another essay, but finding the same circumstances subsisting as before, they again retired under water, and this they continued doing for three mornings; till at length one of them, wearied out by those frequent efforts, the period of nature not being to be totally avoided or suppressed, although it might be retarded, perished in the water, being at length so weak as to be unable to creep above its surface. The other, on removing the vessel into the sunshine, yielded its proper insect."