GENERAL 29 



pellets, webbed together with silk, and looking like old 

 weather-stained sawdust. The other species, H. hep- 

 tathalama, lives solitarily in a fold on the underside of the 

 leaf, and makes for itself a fr ass-roofed, linear, seven-roomed 

 house, of altogether unique character. From Busck's brief 

 account of it we quote the following description: 



It begins by making a small, elongate chamber and adds, as it 

 grows, successively larger, more or less rectangular, thick-walled, 

 communicating rooms to its house, the entire length of which is 

 1 J to 2 inches, and which when finished contains 7 (or sometimes 8) 

 chambers; hence the name of the insect. 



It pupates inside its case, and the moth issues through a round 



Fig. 15. The seven-chambered house (roofed-in mine) of Homaledra 

 heptathalama on palmetto. (After Busck.) 



hole in the last chamber. This is different from the other cham- 

 bers, being rather loosely built. The other chambers are very firm, 

 smoothly finished outside, dark brown. The pupa is brown, very- 

 slender, antennae and wing-cases reaching only halfway down the 

 abdomen. Pupa skin is not protruded at issue. 



The genus Homaledra includes the two species of aberrant 

 habits mentioned on page 28. Both occur on the palmetto. 

 Both mine from shelter, but the one on the lower side of the 

 leaf, H. heptathalama, is solitary, and the one on the upper 

 side, H. sabalella, is gregarious. 



ENEMIES 



Like other animals, leaf -miners have both predacious and 

 parasitic enemies, and as yet comparatively little is known 



