■RAVAGES OF CATERPILLARS. 



221 



a gallery between them, from which it projects its 

 head while feeding ; the grains, as Reaumur remarks, 

 being prevented from rolling 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 be- 

 ginning of July that the moths, which are of a silvery 

 grey, spotted with brown, appear and lay their eggs 

 in granaries. 



The caterpillar of another still more singular grain- 

 moth (Tinea Hordei^ Kirby) proves sometimes 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 sanguinary wars must 

 sometimes arise, in cases of preuccupancy, a single 

 grain of barley being a rich heritage for one of these 



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

 ing a caterpillar •, h, c, the grain cut across, seen to be hollowed 

 out and divided by a partition of silk ; rf, the moth {Tinea Hor- 

 dei) ; e, grains of wheat tied together by the caterpillar,/,- g, the 

 moth {Euplucamus granelld)- 



