The best site for laying the eggs is not always found at the first endeavour. I have seen the mother drive her abdomen right in and make five wells one after the other before finding a suitable place. The pits recognized as defective are abandoned as soon as bored. They are vertical, cylindrical holes, of the diameter of a thick lead-pencil and astonishingly neat. No wimble would produce cleaner work. Their length is that of the insect’s abdomen, distended as far as the extension of the segments allows. At the sixth attempt, the spot is recognized as propitious. The laying thereupon takes place, but nothing outside betrays the fact, so motionless does the mother seem, with her abdomen immersed up to the hilt, which causes the long wings lying on the ground to rumple and open out. The operation lasts for a good hour. At last the abdomen rises, little by little. It is now near the surface, in a favourable position for observation. The valves are in continual movement, whipping a mucus which sets in milk-white foam. It is very similar to the work done by the Mantis when enveloping her eggs in froth. The foamy matter forms a nipple at the entrance to the well, a knob which stands well up and attracts the eye by the whiteness of its colour against the grey background of the soil. It is soft and sticky, but hardens pretty soon. When this closing button is finished, the mother moves away and troubles no more about her eggs, of which she lays a fresh batch elsewhere after a few days have intervened. At other times, the terminal foamy paste does not reach the surface; it stops some way down and, before long, is covered with the sand that slips from the margin. There is then nothing outside to mark the place where the eggs were laid. Even when they concealed the mouth of the well under a layer of swept sand, my various captives, large and small, were too assiduously watched by me to foil my curiosity. I know in every case the exact spot where the barrel of eggs lies. The time has come to inspect it. The thing is easily discovered, an inch or an inch and a half down, with the point of a knife. Its shape varies a good deal in the different species, but the fundamental structure remains the same. It is always a sheath made of solidified foam, a similar foam to that of the nests of the Praying Mantis. Grains of sand stuck together give it a rough outer covering. The mother has not actually made this coarse cover, which constitutes a defensive wall. The mineral wrapper results from the simple infiltration of the product, at first semifluid and viscous, that accompanies the emission of the eggs. The wall of the pocket absorbs it and, swiftly hardening, becomes a cemented scabbard, without the agency of any special labour on the insect’s part.