PUSS-MOTH. 193 



growth, when it is about as thick, and nearly as 

 long, as a man's thumb, and begins to preparfe a 

 structure in which the pupa may sleep securely 

 during the winter. As we have, oftener than once, 

 seen this little architect at work, from the foundation 

 till the completion of its edifice, we are thereby ena- 

 bled to give the details of the process. 



The puss, it may be remarked, does not depend 

 for protection on the hole of a tree, or the shelter of 

 an overhanging branch, but upon the solidity and 

 strength of the fabric which it rears. The material 

 it commonly uses is the bark of the tree upon which 

 the cell is constructed; but when this cannot be pro- 

 cured, it is contented to employ whatever analogous 

 materials may be within reach. One which we had 

 shut up in a box substituted the marble paper 

 it was lined with, for bark, which it could not pro- 

 cure. "^ With silk it first wove a thin web round the 



* It is justly remarked by R aumur, that when caterpillars 

 are left at liberty among their native plants, it is only by lucky 

 chance they can be observed building their cocoons, because the 

 greater number abandon the plants upon which they have been 

 feeding, to spin up in places at some distance. In order to see 

 their operations they must be kept in confinement, particularly in 

 boxes, with glazed doors, where they may be always under the 

 eye of the naturalist. In such circumstances, however, we 

 may be ignorant what building materials we ought to provide 

 them with for their structures. A red caterpillar, with a few 

 tufts of hair, which Reaumur found in July feeding upon the 

 flower bunches of the nettle, and refusing to touch the leaves, 

 began in a few days to prepare its cocoon, by gnawing the pa- 

 per lid of the box in which it was placed. This, of course, was 

 a material which it could not have procured in the fields, but 

 it was the nearest in properties that it could procure; for though 

 it had the leaves and stems of nettles, it never used a single 

 fragment of either. When Reaumur found that it was likely 

 to gnaw through the paper lid of the box, and might effect its 

 escape, he furnished it with bits of rumpled paper, fixed, to the 

 lid by means of a pin; and these it chopped down into such 

 pieces as it judged convenient for its structure, which it took 



VOL. IV. 17 



