lxxii Lloyd's natural history. 



" The hairs of the larva of Miresa ?iitens, Walker, figured by 

 Herrich-Schaffer as Setora nitens, presented a still stranger ap- 

 pearance. When I met with this very beautiful larva it was 

 completely covered with so-called spines. I counted eight 

 large and twenty-four small ones. After a few days it moulted, 

 without seeming to undergo any alteration in its external ap- 

 pearance. A few days later it moulted again, and now I saw 

 the spines changed into tufts of hairs, some of which resembled 

 stiff bristles, and others were more like pencils of hair. Three 

 days later the hairs of these bristles united again, so that they 

 seemed to form stiff spines as before the moulting ; but three 

 days later the hairs again divided, and the previous shape of 

 bristles and pencils came back. After this the spiny shape did 

 not return, but the same tufts of hair altered their shape daily, 

 so that on one day they resembled bristles, and on another 

 pencils ; and this continued until the larva became a pupa. 



" During my residence in the East Indies I busied myself 

 chiefly with Lepidoptera, and I cannot, therefore, say much 

 about insects of other Orders. But I cannot refrain from ob- 

 serving, though it is nothing new, how much stronger and 

 more conspicuous insect life appears in the tropics than in 

 temperate climates. The annoying pertinacity of the flies, 

 which always return, however often driven away, is known to 

 every inhabitant of the East Indies ; and every housekeeper 

 knows that no place of security is inaccessible to the innumer- 

 able ants. My watch stopped one night, and when I took it 

 to the watchmaker he took a small ant from among the wheels, 

 which had availed itself of the narrow opening left lor the 

 spring to work in, to squeeze itself into the watch, and taste 

 the fine oil with which the works were lubricated. Almost 

 every evening hundreds of small insects of all Orders find their 

 death in every lamp ; innumerable Cokoptera fly into lighted 

 dwellings, whose nearest relations in the Temperate Zone also 



