The mother Decticus has a tool at the end of her body with which she scrapes out a little hole in the soil. In this hole she lays a certain number of eggs, then loosens the dust round the side of the hole and rams it down with her tool, very much as we should pack the earth in a hole with a stick. In this way she covers up the well, and then sweeps and smooths the ground above it. She then goes for a little walk in the neighbourhood, by way of recreation. Soon she comes back to the place where she has already laid her eggs, and, very near the original spot, which she recognises quite well, begins the work afresh. If I watch her for an hour I see her go through this whole performance, including the short stroll in the neighbourhood, no less than five times. The points where she lays the eggs are always very close together. When everything is finished I examine the little pits. The eggs lie singly, without any cell or sheath to protect them. There are about sixty of them altogether, pale lilac-grey in colour, and shaped like a shuttle. When I began to observe the ways of the Decticus I was anxious to watch the hatching, so at the end of August I gathered plenty of eggs, and placed them in a small glass jar with a layer of sand. Without suffering any apparent change they spent eight months there under cover, sheltered from the frosts, the showers, and the overpowering heat of the sun, which they would be obliged to endure out of doors. When June came, the eggs in my jar showed no sign of being about to hatch. They were just as I had gathered them nine months before, neither wrinkled nor tarnished, but on the contrary wearing a most healthy look. Yet in June young Dectici are often to be met in the fields, and sometimes even those of larger growth. What was the reason of this delay, I wondered. Then an idea came to me. The eggs of the Grasshopper are planted like seeds in the earth, where they are exposed, without any protection, to snow and rain. Those in my jar had spent two-thirds of the year in a state of comparative dryness. Since they were sown like seeds, perhaps they needed, to make them hatch, the moisture that seeds require to make them sprout. I resolved to try. I placed at the bottom of some glass tubes a pinch of backward eggs taken from my collection, and on the top I heaped lightly a layer of fine, damp sand. I closed the tubes with plugs of wet cotton, to keep the air in them constantly moist. Any one seeing my preparations would have supposed me to be a botanist experimenting with seeds. My hopes were fulfilled. In the warmth and moisture the eggs soon showed signs of hatching. They began to swell, and the bursting of the shell was evidently close at hand. I spent a fortnight in keeping a tedious watch at every hour of the day, for I had to surprise the young Decticus actually leaving the egg, in order to solve a question that had long been in my mind.