468 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



wliich adorn the lepidopterous race. If you are de- 

 sirous of examining- the insects to which I am alluding, 

 you have only to place yourself by the side of a clear 

 and shallow pool of water, and you cannot fail to ob- 

 serve at the bottom little oblong moving masses resem- 

 bling pieces of straw, wood, or even stone. These are 

 the larvae in question, well known to fishermen by the 

 title o[ Caddis-worms, and which, if you take them out 

 of the water, you will observe to inhabit cases of a 

 very singular conformation. Of the larva itself, which 

 somewhat resembles the caterpillars of many Lepido- 

 ptera, nothing is to be seen but the head and six legs 

 by means of which it moves itself in the water, and 

 drags after it the case in which the rest of the body is 

 inclosed, and into which on any alarm it wholly retires. 

 The construction of these habitations is very various. 

 Some select four or five pieces of the leaves of grass, 

 which they glue together into a shapely polygonal case ; 

 others employ portions of the stems of rushes, placed 

 side by side so as to form an elegant fluted cylinder ; 

 some arrange round them pieces of leaves like a spi- 

 rally-rolled ribband*; others inclose themselves in a 

 mass of the leaves of any aquatic plants united without 

 regularity ; and others again form their abode of mi- 

 nute pieces of wood either fresh or decayed "'. One, 

 like the Sabellce^, forms a horn-shaped case composed 

 of grains of sand, so equal in size, and so nicely and 

 regularly gummed together, the sides throughout being 

 of the thickness of one grain only, that the first time 1 

 viewed it I could scarcely persuade myself it could be 



* Plate XVIT. Fig. 10. * Reauia. iii. 156-9. 



* Sovverby's Nat. MisccU. No. ix. t.5]. 



