MINING CATERPILLARS. 



203 



we have already seen ; and we are about now to give an 

 additional instance of the art of a species of caterpillars 

 which select a warmer material for their tents than even 

 the caterpillar of the clothes-moth. It may have been 

 remarked by many who are not botanists, that the seed- 

 catkins of the willow become, as they ripen, covered with a 

 species of down or cotton, which, however, is too short in 

 the fibre to be advantageously employed in onr manufac- 

 tures. But the cateipillars, to which we have alluded, find 

 it well adapted for their habitations. 



The muff-looking tent in which we find these insects 



a. Branch of the Willow, with seed-spikes covered Avith cotton; b. Muff Tents, 

 made of this cotton by c, the Caterpillar. 



does not require much trouble to construct ; for the cater- 

 pillar does not, like the clothes-moth caterpillar, join the 

 willow-cotton together, fibre by fibre — it is contented with 

 the state in which it finds it on the seed. Into this it 

 burrows, lines the interior with a tapestry of silk, and then 

 detaches the whole from the branch where it was growing, 



