RAVAGES OF CATERPILLARS. 



221 



ing a gallery between then), from which it projects its 

 head while feeding; the grains, as Reaumur remarks, 

 being prevented irom roiling or slipping by the silk 

 which unites them. He justly ridicules the absurd 

 notion of its filing off the outer skin of the wheat by 

 rubbing upon it with its body, the latter being the 

 softer of the two: and he disproved, by experiment, 

 Leeuwenhoeck's assertion that it will also feed on 

 woollen cloth. It is from the end of May till the 

 beginning of July that the moths, which are of a 

 silvery gray, spotted with brown, appear and lay their 

 eggs in granaries. 



The caterpillar of another still more singular 

 grain moth {Tinea Hordei, Kirby) proves some- 

 times very destructive to granaries. The mother 

 moth, in May or June, lays about twenty or more 

 eggs on a grain of barley or wheat; and when the 

 caterpillars are hatched they disperse, each selecting 

 a single grain. M. Reaumur imagines that san- 

 guinary wars must sometimes arise, in cases of pre- 

 occupancy, a single grain of barley being a rich 



Transformations of the grain moths, n, grain of barley includ- 

 ing a caterpillar ; 6, c, the grain cut across, seen to be hollowed 

 out, and divided by a partition of silk ; d, the moth (Tinea 

 Hordei); e, grains of wheat tied together by the caterpillar; /, 

 g, the moth ( Eu.pl oca-mus granella). 



VOL. VI. 



