HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 463 



habitations by other larvae, though usually joined to- 

 gether either with silk or an analogous gummy mate- 

 rial. Thus Tinea Licheninn forms of pieces of lichen 

 a dwelling- resembling one of the turrited Helices^ many 

 of which I observed in June 1812 on an oak in Barham. 

 The larvffi of another Tinea, which also feeds upon li- 

 chens, instead of employing- these vegetables in form- 

 ing- its habitation, composes it of grains of stone eroded 

 from the walls of buildings upon which its food is found, 

 and connected by a silken cement. These insects were 

 the subject of a paper in the Memoirs of the French 

 Academy % by M. de la Voye, who, from the circum- 

 stance of their being- found in great abundance on moul- 

 dering- Avails, attributed to them the power of eating- 

 stone, and regarded them as the authors of injuries pro- 

 ceeding- solely from the hand of time : for the insects 

 themselves are so minute, and the coating of grains of 

 stone composing their cases is so trifling-, that Reaumur 

 observes they could scarcely make any perceptible im- 

 pression on a wall from which they had procured ma- 

 terials for ages'". — Another lepidopterous larva, but of 

 a much larger size and different genus, the case of which 

 is preserved in the cabinet of the President of the Lin- 

 nean Society, who pointed it out to me, employs the 

 spines apparently of some species o^ Mimosa^ which are 

 ranged side by side so as to form a very elegant fluted 

 cylinder. A similar arrangement of pieces of small twigs 

 is observable in the habitation of the females'^ of the 



* X. 458. " Reaum. iii. 183. 



"^ The larvae of the males intermix with the pieces of twig?, which arc 

 less closely and regularly arranged, bits of dried leaves and other liglit 



