What is the meaning of this odd performance?—this ceremony, as it appears to me, though Mr. Froggatt takes a utilitarian view of it. “The probable and only reason,” he remarks, “that I can see for the attendance of the two males upon the egg-laying female is that it enables her to get a firmer grip of the ground, and, in fact, holds her in position till she completes her task.”[24] But why, then, should the females of no other species of locust, as far as we are aware, require this aid, and should not the soil of Africa be as hard as that of Australia? “I can find,” says Mr. Froggatt, “no record of this habit in any of our described species, which have the same habits.”[24] Again, besides the two chief actors, we have the admiring ring of from thirty to fifty males, who can be of no possible service, but whose conduct shows that they take a strong interest in what the female is doing. What is it, too, that regulates the number, or, at any rate, the personality of the assistant males? If it is a matter of rendering assistance only, and the two males who do so are bound to the female by no more special tie than the crowd of interested spectators, why do not these, or some of them, push forward? Why is there never any contention between them? These considerations make me think that there is something of a formal and ceremonious character about these queer proceedings, and that they are governed by the same general law as are certain antics or set figures amongst birds, wherein three individuals take a part. What one requires to know is the courting and marital relations of the male and female locust before the egg-laying takes place. These little locusts—_Epacromia terminalis_ is the specific name—are only about an inch in length, and the male, from the description, seems a little brighter than the female, which may be due to sexual selection. The female appears to lay nineteen eggs only, neither more nor less, which is not so many as one would have expected from the Arabian legend. With some other species, however, the number more conforms to the statement said to have been made to Mahomet.