The little Locust, on leaving his shell, is a whitish colour, clouded with light red. His progress is made by wormlike movements; and, so that it may be impeded as little as possible, he is hatched in the condition of a mummy, that is to say, clad, like the young Grasshoppers, in a temporary jacket, which keeps his antennæ, palpi and legs closely fixed to his breast and belly. The head itself is very much bent. The large hind-thighs are arranged side by side with the folded shanks, shapeless as yet, short and as it were crooked. On the way, the legs are slightly released; the hind-legs are straightened out and afford a fulcrum for the sapping-work. The boring-tool, a repetition of the Grasshoppers’, is at the neck. There is here a tumour that swells, subsides, throbs and strikes the obstacle with pistonlike regularity. A tiny and most tender cervical bladder engages in a struggle with quartz. At the sight of this capsule of glair striving to overcome the hardness of the mineral, I am seized with pity. I come to the unhappy creature’s assistance by slightly damping the layer to be passed through. Despite my intervention, the task is so arduous that, in an hour, I see the indefatigable one make a progress of hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch. How you must labour, you poor little thing, how you must persevere with your throbbing head and writhing loins, before you can clear a passage for yourself through the thin layer which my kindly drop of water has softened for you! The ineffectual efforts of the tiny mite tell us plainly that the emergence into the light of day is an enormous undertaking, in which, but for the aid of the exit-tunnel, the mother’s work, the greater number would succumb. It is true that the Grasshoppers, similarly equipped, find it even more difficult to make their way out of the earth. Their eggs are laid naked in the ground; no outward passage is prepared for them beforehand. We may assume, therefore, that the mortality must be very high among these improvident ones; legions are bound to perish at the time of the exodus. This is confirmed by the comparative scarcity of Grasshoppers and the extreme abundance of Locusts. And yet the number of eggs laid is about the same in both cases. The Locust does not, in fact, limit herself to a single casket containing a score of eggs: she puts into the ground two, three and more, which gives a total population approaching that of the Decticus and other Grasshoppers. If, to the greater delight of the consumers of small game, she thrives so well, whereas the Grasshopper, who is quite as fertile but less ingenious, dwindles, does she not owe it to that superb invention, her exit-turret?