We incubated Takydromus wolteri eggs at 30℃ using wet vermiculite as the incubation substrate of which the moisture was kept at -12kPa, we paid particular attention to the embryonic growth and embryonic use of material and energy during incubation. Eggs were weighed at 5-day intervals to test for temporal changes in egg mass. From the tenth, fifteenth, twentieth day of incubation, we randomly selected 15,15,12 eggs from different clutches respectively, opened and separated them into shell, embryo and yolk. The three egg components were oven dried to constant mass at 65℃, weighed and preserved frozen for later determination of composition. Upon emergence, size and mass were measured on each hatchling. Hatchlings (n= 29) were then killed by freezing to -15℃ for later study. Upon thawing, we separated each hatchling into weighed and preserved frozen for later determination of composition. We extracted non-polar lipids from dried carcass, residual yolk and fat bodies. The three hatchling components were oven dried to constant mass at 65℃,samples in a Soxhlet apparatus for a minimum of 5.5 h using absolute ether as solvent. The amount of lipids in a sample was determined by subtracting the lipid-free dry mass from the total sample dry mass. The total lipid in each hatchling was calculated as the sum of the lipids in its carcass, residual yolk and fat bodies. We determined energy content of dried samples using an adiabatic bomb calorimeter and ash content in each sample using a muffle furnace at 700℃ for a minimum of 8 h and then weighing the remaining ash. The duration of incubation averaged 24.7 days in this study. Eggs increased in wet mass during incubation due to the absorption of water from the substrate. At the stage of 0-15, 15-20, 20-24.7 days of incubation, the developing embryos mobilized approximately 11%, 14% and 75% of the total egg energy in the yolk of the freshly laid egg, respectively. Embryos grew slowly during the first 20 days, the maximal embryonic growth occurred at the stage of 20-24.7 days of incubation. During incubation, approximately 50.3%dry material, 24.9%non-polar lipids and 51.9%energy in egg contents of the freshly laid egg were transferred to the hatchling. Of all energy in the newly emerged hatchling, 95.2%was in the carcass, 2.2%in fat bodies and 2.6 %in the residual yolk. Embryos used both yolk and eggshell as the sources of inorganic material for development. Our data show that the lower conversion efficiencies of energy and material from egg to hatchling in T. wolteri can be mainly attributed to their greater energetic costs of embryonic development and lower residual yolk sizes.