IIAIES, FEATHERS, AND SCALES. 



15 



stand out at an angle : these are set on in a spiral order. 

 Here again, is one of the hinder legs of the saine bee : 

 the yellow hair, -svhich you can see with the naked eve, 

 consists of strong, horny, cin*ved spines, each of which 

 is scored obliquely, like a butcher's steel. These legs 

 are used, as you are well aware, to brush off the pollen 

 from the anthers of flowers, wherewith the substance 

 called bee-bread, the food of the grubs, is made ; and 

 in this specimen, you may see hundreds of the beautiful 

 oval pollen-grains entangled among these formidable 

 looking spines. 



These rusty hairs are from a large caterpillar (that 

 of the Oak Egger Moth, I believe) ; they appear, when 

 highly magniiied, like stout horny rods drawn out to an 

 acute point, and sending forth alternate 

 short pointed spines, which scarcely project 

 from the line of the axis. 



But there is scarcely any hair more curi- 

 ous than that of a troublesome grub in mu- 

 seums and cabinets, the larva of Derniestes 

 lardarius, which lives upon fur-skins, and 

 any dried animal substances. It has a cyl- 

 indrical shaft, which is covered with whorls 

 of large close-set spines, four or five in each 

 M'horl, closely succeeding each other ; the 

 upper part of the shaft is surrounded by a 

 whorl of larger and more knotted spines, and 

 the extremity is fui-nished with six or seven 

 larije filaments, Mdiich appear to have aTip of haic of 

 knob-like hinge in the middle, by mIiIcIi 

 tliey are bent up on themselves. 



The feathers of Birds are essentially hairs. That 

 sliri veiled membrane which Ave pull out of the interior 



