208 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



tively extensive, arising from its recrossing its previous 

 tracks. (J. E.) 



Swammerdam describes a mining caterpillar wliicli he 

 found on the leaves of the alder, though it did not, like 

 those we have just described, excavate a winding gallerj^ ; 

 it kept upon the same spot, and formed only an irregular 

 area. A moth was produced from this, whose upper wings, 

 he says, " shone and glittered most gloriously with crescents 

 of gold, silver, and brown, surrounded by borders of 

 delicate black." Another area miner which he found on 

 the leaves of willows, as many as seventeen on one leaf, 

 producing what appeared to be rusty spots, was metamor- 

 phosed into a very minute weevil {Curculio Ehinoc). He 

 says he has been informed that, in warm climates, worms 

 an inch long are found in leaves, and adds, wdth great 

 simplicity, " on these many fine experiments might have 

 been made, if the inhabitants had not laboured under 

 the cursed thirst of gold." * 



The vine-leaf miner, when about to construct its cocoon, 

 cuts, from the termination of its gallery, two pieces of the 

 membrane of the leaf, deprived of their pulp, in a similar 

 manner to the tent-makers described above, uniting them 

 and lining them wath silk. This she carries to some 

 distance before she lays herself up to undergo her change. 

 Her mode of walking under her burthen is peculiar, for, 

 not contented with the security of a single thread of silk, 

 she forms, as Bonnet says, " little mountains (monticules) of 

 silk, from distance to distance, and seizing one of these 

 with her teeth, drags herself forward, and makes it a 

 scaffolding from which she can build another." | Some of 

 the miners, however, do not leave their galleries, but 

 undergo their transformations there, taking the precaution 

 to mine a cell, not in the upper, but in the under surface ; 

 others only shift to another portion of the leaf. 



* Swammerd., ' Book of Natiu-e,' vol. ii. p. 84. 

 t ' Contempl. de la Nature,' part xii. p. 197. 



