Life History.

The perfect insect is rather over two inches in length. It is brown or chocolate, becoming rather ochreous under its body. The elytra are whitish, and the wings are also whitish, membranous and ample when spread. Curtis says that this constitutes the sole difference between the sexes, though Taschenberg holds that there are slight distinctions in the arrangement of the eight rings of the body. The fore feet are very stoutly made, proportionally short, but very strong and thick, like those of the mole, admirably suited for burrowing in the ground. They can fly, jump, and dig, and possess the power of running backwards as well as forwards, to facilitate which the end of the abdomen is furnished with two bristles, or filaments, to serve the same purpose as antennae or feelers.

In May and the early part of June the female lays from two hundred to three hundred eggs of an ovoid shape, and dirty yellow colour. Latreille says from two hundred to four hundred are laid by one female. These are placed in a cluster (No. I), within a nest a few inches under the ground "in a kind of chamber," as Gilbert White describes it in his Natural History of Selborne, "with many caverns and winding passages." There is a communication between the nest and the surface by means of a passage. From the eggs larvae of the size of that shown at No. 2 come resembling black ants, which begin to feed at once upon roots of corn plants, grasses, and vegetables. These have no wings, but grow fast, moulting four or five times until they are about one and a quarter inches in length (No. 3). They remain in this state for three years, and in November go down deeply into the earth away from the effects of cold.