LEPIDOPTERA. LARV.E. 2?7 



larvae or pupae under circumstances which claim our 

 attention. 



The true Naturalist (or, to use a pleasanter and larger 

 term, the lover of nature), while in the eyes of the world 

 a mere idler, has, of all men, the least chance or oppor- 

 tunity of being idle. 



The Botanist and Entomologist, for instance, will 

 hardly pass without question a blotch in a leaf, a thread- 

 like track in a dusty road, a hole in a tree trunk, or a 

 patch of discoloration in a wall, unless he has traced 

 out its history, and found a reason for its being 

 there. 



And thus it falls out that the driest hedge by a dusty 

 road-side, the oldest paling, the newest brick-wall, pre- 

 sents to his mind a series of what have been called " life 

 histories," not perhaps written out in full, but indicated ; 

 and the series of familiar signs which meets the eye of 

 the practised Naturalist give a pleasure not unlike that 

 which the bookworm derives from the perusal of a book- 

 catalogue or of the book-backs in a library. 



Now the student of the tribe before us has especial 

 facilities for accounting for a spot on this leaf, a streak 

 on that, a fragment of silk clinging to a third, and a 

 jagged hole in a fourth. To him the spot may recall the 

 history of a little creature sheltered in a leafy tent, con- 

 structed by itself, and carried like the house of a snail ; 

 still farther sheltered by the instinct which confined its 

 labours below the leaf. Eating and eating, first it has 

 destroyed the under cuticle of the leaf, then the green and 

 tender part withjm, even till the upper cuticle was reached ; 

 never touching this, keeping its shelter unimpaired, 

 until, full-grown and ready for its change, it falls to the 

 ground, where it now lies swathed in a little shroud (its 



