Motherly Sacrifice by the Gall Insect.

Some kinds of gall insects immolate themselves in order to protect their offspring. As the enormously distended insect gradually expels its eggs, it heaps them up in a little pile, and when its body is quite cleared out, and only resembles a hollow bladder, the female straightway covers its progeny with it, attaches the edges round them, and dies directly after. It thus forms for them a convex, solid roof, the impermeability of which protects its eggs against the injurious agency of the air and storms. The mother pays for her childbirth with her life, and her young are born under the shelter of her mummified corpse.