INSTINCT OF INSECTS. -l-TS 



irregularly and artfully cut, to be accommodated to such 

 a figure — it must be admitted, are the result of an instinct 

 of no very simple kind. Complicated, however, as these 

 manoeuvres seem, our ingenious workman is not confined 

 to them. By way of putting its resources to the test, 

 Reaumur cut oif the serrated edge from the nearly- 

 finished coat of one of them, and exposed the little oc- 

 cupant to the day. He expected that it would have 

 quitted its mutilated garment and commenced another ; 

 and so it certainly would, had it been guided by an in- 

 variable instinct. But he calculated erroneously. Like 

 one of its brother tailors of the biped race, it knew how 

 " to cut its coat according to its cloth," and immediately 

 setting about repairing the injury sewed up the rent. 

 Nor was this all. The scissars having cut off one of the 

 projections intended to enter into the construction of the 

 triangular end of its case, it entirely changed the original 

 plan, and made that end the head which had been first 

 designed for the tail. 



On another occasion Reaumur observed one of these 

 larvae to cut out its coat from the very centre of a leaf, 

 where it is obvious a series of operations wholly different 

 must be adopted, the two membranes composing it ne- 

 cessarily requiring to be cut and sewed on two sides in- 

 stead of on one only. But what was most striking in 

 this new procedure was the alteration which the caterpil- 

 lar made in the period of sewing up its garment. When 

 these larvae cut out their case from the edge of a leaf, 

 they seem aware that, if they were to detach it entirely 

 from the inner side before the process of sewing, lining, 

 &c., is completed, having no support on the exterior edge, 

 it would be liable to fall down ; at the same time they 



