222 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



its original colour be blue, and the insect previously 

 to enlarging it be put upon red cloth, the circles at 

 the end, and two stripes down the middle, will be 

 red."* Reaumur found that they cut these enlarge- 

 ments in no precise order, but sometimes continuously, 

 and sometimes opposite each other, indifferently. 



The same naturahst says he never knew one leave 

 its dwelling in order to build a new, though, when 

 once ejected by force from its house, it would never 

 enter it again, as some other species of caterpillars 

 will do, but always preferred building another. We, 

 on the contrary, have more than once seen them leave 

 an old habitation. The very caterpillar, indeed, whose 

 history we have above given, first took up its abode 

 in a specimen of the ghost-moth {Hepialus humuli), 

 where finding few suitable materials for building, it 

 had recourse to the cork of the drawer, with the 

 chips of which it made a structure almost as warm 

 as it would have done from wool. Whether it took 

 offence at our disturbing it one day, or whether it 

 did not find sufficient food in the body of the ghost- 

 moth, we know not ; but it left its cork house, and 

 travelled about eighteen inches, selected " the old 

 lady," one of the largest insects in the drawer, and 

 built a new apartment composed partly of cork as 

 before, and partly of bits dipt out of the moth's 

 wings, t 



We have seen these caterpillars form their habita- 

 tions of every sort of insect, from a butterfly to a 

 beetle; and the soft feathery wings of moths answer 

 their purpose very well: but when they fall in with 

 such hard materials as the musk beetle {Ceramhyx 

 moschatus) or the large scolopendra of the West 

 Indies, they find some difficulty in the building. 



When the structure is finished, the insect deems 



* Bonnet, vol. ix. p. 203. t J. R. 



