MUFF-MAKERS. 237 



whole to the uncut part of the leaf by a cable of its own silk. 

 Consequently, when it does cut the last nervure, it is secure 

 from falling, and can travel along the leaf, carrying its tent on 

 its back, as a snail does its shell."* 



There is commonly to be seen about Midsummer, upon 

 leaves of oak, hazel, dock, and other plants, what, on a cursory 

 glance, appears a bundle of little bits of stalk and straw acci- 

 dentally collected and combined. On looking closer we find, 

 however, that the pieces are arranged longitudinally side by 

 side, and much too regularly to have come together hap-hazard. 

 We shall perceive also that among several of these Lilliputian 

 faggots, some are fixed perpendicularly to the leaf, while 

 others are in motion over the surface. The latter are attending 

 the progress of their occupants, each a small prettily-striped 

 caterpillar, which, with head and shoulders protruded, thus 

 travels under cover of what we may call a tent of sticks. The 

 sticks, however, which cover its exterior, form in fact only a 

 protecting palisade attached to a silk-woven central case, the 

 real tent which surrounds the body of its ingenious architect. 



The " muff- makers '' among moths do not show as much 

 ingenuity as the moths among muffs in the manufacture of 

 their body coats; but they display even superior tact and 

 shrewdness in the appropriation of a ready-made article, admi- 

 rably adapted to serve their turn. The muffs in question are 

 of vegetable fur, that short silky down which clothes the seed- 

 catkins of the palm-willow, and is often chosen by a certain 



* Insect Architecture, p. 226. 



