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Updated: June 11, 2025
The Taxicorn Clythra is the first in the field; I see her at working during the last days of May. A most singular and disconcerting batch of eggs is hers! Is it really a group of eggs? I hesitate until I surprise the mother using her hind-legs to finish extracting the strange germ which issues slowly and perhaps laboriously from her oviduct. It is indeed the Taxicorn Clythra's batch.
We will not be too certain, for here is the Four-spotted Clythra, who would flatly contradict us. The male has fore-legs of modest dimensions, in conformity with the usual rules; he places himself crosswise like the others and nevertheless achieves his ends without hindrance. He finds it enough to modify slightly the gymnastics of his embrace.
Our potters have their lathe, the tray which keeps the work rotating and implements to determine its outline. Could the Clythra, an exceptional ceramic artist, work without a base and without a guide? It strikes me as an insurmountable difficulty.
Mingled with the normal eggs of both the Golden Cryptocephalus and the Long-legged Clythra, I find others which differ in no respect from the usual run of insects' eggs. The eggs are perfectly smooth, with a soft, pale-yellow shell. As the cage contains no other insects than the Clythra under consideration or the Cryptocephalus, I cannot be mistaken as to the origin of my finds.
Materiem superabat opus, nam Mulciber illic Æquora celerat, said Ovid, in his description of the Palace of the Sun. The poet had precious metals and gems wherewith to build his imaginary marvel. What has the Clythra wherewith to achieve its ideal jewel? It has the shameful material whose name is banished from decent speech.
With the exception of the Taxicorn Clythra, whose egg, with its suspension-stalk, seems to denote rather special habits, I see my several charges begin to prolong their shell with a brown paste, similar in appearance to that with whose manufacture and employment we are already familiar.
He believes that the power of stridulation in the Clythra has not been previously observed. I am also much indebted to Mr. E.W. Janson, for information and specimens. I may add that my son, Mr. F. Darwin, finds that Dermestes murinus stridulates, but he searched in vain for the apparatus. Scolytus has lately been described by Dr.
He closes the occupied part with a stout partition-wall at the back; then, dashing against the sharp stones, he chips off the superfluous portion, the hovel not fit to live in. The broken shell loses its accurate form in the process, but gains in lightness. The Clythra does not employ the Bulimus' method.
It is in the cloaca, the chamber common to the oviduct and the intestine, that the bird wraps its egg in a calcareous shell, often decorating it with magnificent hues: olive-green for the Nightingale, sky-blue for the Wheatear, soft pink for the Icterine Warbler. It is in the cloaca also that the Clythra and the Cryptocephalus produce the elegant armour of their eggs.
Thus do the amorous insects declare their flame and win the consent of the hesitating fair. The attitude of the couple now tells us the use of a certain organic detail peculiar to the Clythra. In several species, though not in all, the males' fore-legs are of inordinate length. What is the object of these extravagant arms, these curious grappling-irons out of all proportion to the insect's size?
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