The eggs of some insects strikingly resemble the little shells like turbans with which we are most of us familiar. A very singular variety of egg which has often caused much perplexity to naturalists is the egg of the lace-winged fly. Réaumer says, "I had observed them several years without actually knowing what they were. Others as well as myself had noticed that on the leaves and twigs of many trees were a number of minute stalks placed together, scarcely as thick as a hair, their colour was nearly white, and they were about an inch in length; there were sometimes ten or twelve placed in a bunch; the end of each stalk bore a small head of an egg-like or oblong figure. They appeared to me to be fungi, the little head precisely resembling the appearance of moulds as seen under the microscope; but they were larger in size." They were, in fact, the eggs of the fly in question. When the larva escapes from them they have much the appearance of little vases; and the same author assures us that they were once described and engraved by a naturalist as some curious minute flower growing on the leaves of the elder, for which he was unable to account. The representation of them in the cut will enable the reader to form his own opinion as to the difficulty of ascertaining whether they were flowers or the nests of an insect. [Illustration: _Manner of depositing the Egg._] The manner in which these eggs are thus regularly placed by the insect is interesting. Placing herself upon the leaf in the attitude represented, she fastens a thread to the leaf, draws it out in the same way as a spider does her lines, and when it has got sufficiently firm the wise insect then puts forth the egg, glueing it to the extremity of the stalk; this done, she quits it and begins to form another, repeating the same actions until the proper number is laid. Poised on the summit of these slender pillars the eggs are secure from every invader but man himself, and in time there comes from them the larva which is to become the beautiful insect, the "lace-winged fly," in all the elegance of its form. From what has been already stated, the surface of the eggs of insects, it will be perceived, is by no means in all cases smooth and polished as in the case of birds. Far otherwise. To look at some of them by the help of a magnifying glass we should imagine that they were covered with very fine lace net, others appear as if some clever engraver had been chasing some intricate design upon their surface. The eggs of a species of butterfly are studded over with an infinite number of little knots or tubercles; and those of another are capped at the top with sculptured work disposed in the form of a circular tiling or roof to the egg. Some also closely resemble embossed buttons.