138 THE LIFE OF AN INSECT. 



signed to the flames for their misdeeds. Some- 

 times they are collected thus by bushels, from 

 which it may readily be conceived what has been 

 the amount of damage they have done. 



There is a little moth whose larva is equally 

 mischievous in appropriating to its own use the 

 food and property of man ; its name is the Tinea 

 hordei. This fly, we are told, deposits perhaps 

 twenty or thirty eggs in a single grain; but as 

 one grain only is to be the portion of one larva, so 

 soon as they are hatched they disperse by mutual 

 consent in a very amicable manner, and each 

 selects its future home, so that in a short time the 

 whole family is comfortably lodged in twenty or 

 thirty distinct grains of corn. There, surrounded 

 by food, they live and thrive, eating up all the 

 precious parts of the grain, until nothing remains 

 but the husk. They then fall asleep and enter 

 upon the further stages of insect development. 

 No one could possibly tell by the external ap- 

 pearance of the corn, that the least mischief had 

 taken place within, the fulness and general aspect 

 of the grain being the same; but on carefully 

 examining it, a very minute hole may be found in 

 some spot or other ; it was here the enemy got 



