I have found them over the whole area of the pot, at a depth of a twelfth of an inch. As closely as the difficulties of the operation will allow, I have estimated the eggs of a single female, upon passing the earth through a sieve, at five or six hundred. Such a family will certainly undergo an energetic pruning before very long. The egg of the Cricket is a curiosity, a tiny mechanical marvel. After hatching it appears as a sheath of opaque white, open at the summit, where there is a round and very regular aperture, to the edge of which adheres a little valve like a skull-cap which forms the lid. Instead of breaking at random under the thrusts or the cuts of the new-formed larva, it opens of itself along a line of least resistance which occurs expressly for the purpose. The curious process of the actual hatching should be observed. A fortnight after the egg is laid two large eye-marks, round and of a reddish black, are seen to darken the forward extremity of the egg. Next, a little above these two points, and right at the end of the cylinder, a tiny circular capsule or swelling is seen. This marks the line of rupture, which is now preparing. Presently the translucency of the egg allows us to observe the fine segmentation of the tiny inmate. Now is the moment to redouble our vigilance and to multiply our visits, especially during the earlier part of the day. Fortune favours the patient, and rewards my assiduity Round the little capsule changes of infinite delicacy have prepared the line of least resistance. The end of the egg, pushed by the head of the inmate, becomes detached, rises, and falls aside like the top of a tiny phial. The Cricket issues like a Jack-in-the-box. When the Cricket has departed the shell remains distended, smooth, intact, of the purest white, with the circular lid hanging to the mouth of the door of exit. The egg of the bird breaks clumsily under the blows of a wart-like excrescence which is formed expressly upon the beak of the unborn bird; the egg of the Cricket, of a far superior structure, opens like an ivory casket. The pressure of the inmate's head is sufficient to work the hinge. The moment he is deprived of his white tunic, the young Cricket, pale all over, almost white, begins to struggle against the overlying soil. He strikes it with his mandibles; he sweeps it aside, kicking it backwards and downwards; and being of a powdery quality, which offers no particular resistance, he soon arrives at the surface, and henceforth knows the joys of the sun, and the perils of intercourse with the living; a tiny, feeble creature, little larger than a flea. His colour deepens. In twenty-four hours he assumes a splendid ebony black which rivals that of the adult insect. Of his original pallor he retains only a white girdle which encircles the thorax and reminds one of the leading-string of an infant.