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It remains to decide upon the material employed. From its horny appearance there is reason to believe that the little barrel of the Taxicorn Clythra and the scales of the Four-spotted Clythra are the products of a special secretion; and, now that it is too late, I much regret that I neglected to look for the apparatus yielding this secretion in the neighbourhood of the cloaca.

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.

The mother drops them carelessly, here and there, from the top of the bough where she is refreshing herself by soberly notching some tender leaf. The Taxicorn Clythra fits a long stalk to her eggs and fixes them in clusters on the foliage.

Remember also the Eumenes' hanging egg, which swings at the end of a thread, thus protecting the grub when it takes its first mouthfuls of the heap of dangerous game. The Taxicorn Clythra provides us with a third example of eggs fitted with suspension-threads, but so far nothing has given me an inkling of the function or the use of this string.

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.