Yet she has only to apply that abdominal extremity to the opening of the passage, and the egg is immediately lodged at the very bottom.
Anatomy will give us the answer to the riddle, which is otherwise indecipherable.

I open the body of a gravid female.

There, before my eyes, is something that takes my breath away.

There, occupying the whole length of the body, is an extraordinary device; a red, horny, rigid rod; I had almost said a rostrum, so greatly does it resemble the implement which the insect carries on his head.

It is a tube, fine as a horsehair, slightly enlarged at the free extremity, like an old-fashioned blunderbuss, and expanding to form an egg-shaped capsule at the point of origin.
This is the oviduct, and its dimensions are the same as those of the rostrum.