The locust plague and its suppression / by Æneas Munro.

  • Munro, Aeneas.
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The locust plague and its suppression / by Æneas Munro. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    abdomen is thus capable of a double enlargement—extension and expansion. It is enabled to, and actually does, bore a hole to the extent of from 3 to 3^ in., or 7^ to 9 centimetres (i.e., larger and bigger than her own body), in the first instance, to provide a receptacle for the eggs. In this way we find the females sunk as it were into the earth, so that little more than their heads are visible outside during this period. The hole is straight or perpendicular, and in this respect the migratory locust seems to differ from the Rocky Mountain locust, whose holes seem to be almost invariably curved or oblique or slanting. Our locusts require a deeper hole, because they therein deposit eighty eggs, instead of the others’ twenty-eight (see Fig. 6). Fig. 6.—North American (Rocky Mountain) locusts nesting. 104. Orderly deposition of eggs.—Between the spades or hooks, we have seen, there are two fine sort of projections or little black fingers which assist in placing the eggs in position in the nest. The eggs pass through the oviduct, which is on the ventral aspect of the abdomen, into a spoon-shaped expansion (Fig. 5, IV. g) of the last segment, which conducts them in turn between the parts of the fingers or ovipositor. By the ovipositor they are lodged into their position in the hole or nest, and so are built or planted there, one after the other, in a uniform and well-recognised position, to which I shall presently refer. It is natural to suppose that the eggs are lubricated with the spumous or glutinous material or secretion, which helps to make them adhere and keep in their places more easily. 105. Shape of eggs.—It may be well for me to say, in reference to what is called locusts' eggs, that they are not egg-shaped, like those seen in the clusters of round eggs of the “blow-fly” or “ bluebottle.”
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