[5] .351 increased to .546 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[6] .156 increased to .235 or .275 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
SOME PLANT LICE
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CHAPTER I
THE PENTATOMÆ AND THEIR EGGS
Of the forms which life is able to bestow on her creations, that of the bird’s egg is one of the simplest and loveliest. Nowhere do we find the beauty of the circle and the ellipse, the geometrical bases of organic bodies, combined with greater precision. At one of the poles is the sphere, the perfect form, capable of enclosing the greatest volume in the smallest envelope; at the other is the point of the ellipsoid, which tempers the monotonous austerities of the big end.
The colour-scheme, likewise very simple, adds its graces to those of form. Some eggs display the dull white of chalk, others the translucid white of polished ivory. The Wheat-ear’s are a delicate blue, like that of a sky freshly washed by a rain-storm; the Nightingale’s are a dark green, like that of a pickled olive; the eggs of certain Warblers are tinted with an exquisite carnation, like that of roses still in the bud.
The Yellow-hammer scrawls an indecipherable [[184]]scribble on her eggs; that is to say, the shells display mottled markings, an artistic mixture of lines and blots. The Butcher-birds encircle the large end with a speckled crown; the Blackbird and the Raven sprinkle brown splashes, innocent of design, on a greenish-blue ground; the Curlew and the Gull employ large spots like those on the Leopard’s coat; and so with the rest; each has its speciality, its trade-mark, always designed in sober colours, the mere matching of which constitutes a merit.