LEAF-CUTTERS. 248 



most commonly met with, and there are others which display 

 even a greater amount of ingenuity in their instinct-guided 

 operations. Of these there are many detailed descriptions ; 

 but, except as leaders to observation, these are somewhat 

 tedious, and, unless much illustrated, not easy to understand. 

 Were it even otherwise, our business, like that of the insect 

 artificers under review, is that of compression ; and, as these 

 little weavers shorten their silken threads to draw their leaves 

 into narrow compass, so must we manoeuvre with their ingenious 

 labours to bring, even a few of them, within the limits of a 

 descriptive essay. 



Portions of leaves, as well as entire ones, are sometimes 

 employed in the operations of leaf-rolling caterpillars, which, 

 in these instances, using their jaws with all the precision of 

 well directed scissors, manage to cut out, but without entirely 

 cutting off, a piece of material shaped exactly to their purpose. 

 A worker of this description is a little smooth greenish-white 

 caterpillar, which, out of a piece of sorrel leaf thus excised and 

 not detached, forms a sort of conical pyramid, composed of five 

 or six enwrapping folds. Having cut out the required segment, 

 the cunning artificer rolls it slowly up by means of threads 

 attached to the surface of the leaf, " and then, having cut in a 

 different direction, sets the cone upright by weaving other threads 

 attached to the centre of the roll and the plane of the leaf, upon 

 which it throws the weight of its bod?/" * After having de- 

 voured the interior folds of this ingeniously constructed cone, 



Insect Architecture, p 167 - also Reaumcr. 



