CHAPTER V. 



THE CLOTHES MOTH. 



FOR over a fortnight we once enjoyed the company of the 

 caterpillar of a common clothes moth. It is a little pale, deli 

 cate worm (Fig. 57, magnified), about the size of a darning 

 needle, and rather less than half an inch in length, with a pale 

 horn-colored head, the ring next the head being of the same 

 color. It has sixteen feet, the first six of them well developed 

 and constantly in use to draw the slender body in and out of it s 

 case. Its head is armed with a formidable pair of jaws, with 

 which, like a scythe, it mows its way through thick and thin. 



But the case is the most remarkable feature in the history 

 of this caterpillar. Hardly has the helpless, tiny worm broken 

 out of the egg, previously laid in some old garment of fur or 

 wool, or perhaps in the haircloth of a sofa, when it begins 

 to make a shelter by cutting the woolly fibres or soft hairs 

 into bits, which it places at each end in successive layers, and, 

 joining them together by silken threads, constructs a cylindrical 

 tube (Fig. 58) of thick, warm felt, lined within with the finest 

 silk the tiny worm can spin. The case is not perfectly cylindri 

 cal, being flattened slightly in the middle, and contracted a little 

 just before each end, both of which are always kept open. The 

 case before us is of a stone-gray color, with a black stripe along 

 the middle, and with rings of the same color round each opening. 

 Had the caterpillar fed on blue or yellow cloth, the case would, 

 of course, have been of those colors. Other cases, made by 

 larva) which had been eating loose cotton, were quite irregular 

 in form, and covered loosely with bits of cotton thread, which 

 the little tailor had not trimmed off. 



Days go by. A vigorous course of dieting on its feast of 

 (64) 



