64 MICRO-LEPIDOPTEIIA. 



great work on the " Lepidoptera of Europe," completed only twd 

 or three years since, and now to be had in six quarto volumes for 

 the sum of thirty pounds ! No less remarkable in its way, how- 

 ever, is Mr. Stainton's " .Natural History of the Tineina ;" a work 

 which, though elucidating only one section of small moths those, 

 namely, allied to the Clothes-Moth, and which are for the most 

 part much smaller even than that little depredator is yet pub- 

 lished in four different languages English, French, German, and 

 Latin printed in parallel columns, and in illustrated octavo 

 volumes, of which there will probably be upwards of twenty be- 

 fore the series is complete ! 



The little Moths which are thus being honoured with a 

 polyglot history, and portraits executed in the highest style of 

 art, are amongst the most beautiful, and, in the details of their 

 private lives, the most interesting members of the entire lepidop- 

 terous order. In the larvae state they are very generally what are 

 termed " leaf miners," the minute caterpillars living on the fleshy 

 pulp of leaves, between the under and the upper skin, where, 

 like the students of our Inns of Court, they eat their way, pro- 

 ducing those white blotches and tortuous lines so often seen on 

 the foliage of plants by the way-side. There is, however, an 

 almost endless diversity of habit among these " micro " larva?, 

 some species feeding externally, others in rolled-up leaves, others 

 again patching out for themselves little cases from the old 

 clothes in our cupboards, or the linings of our sofas ; while 

 several species creep, snail-like, over old walls and palings, in 

 cases constructed of bits of grass or particles of earth. Some of 

 these case-bearing larva?, besides eating the soft pulp of the leaf, 

 make use also of the skin itself, out of this constructing their 

 conical teat-like cases, in which they wander about, always in 

 danger, apparently, of having their houses toppling over, and 

 looking the oddest little creatures imaginable. It is wonderful, 

 too, to notice with what careful instinct these little tent-dwellers 

 spin down their cases to the surface of the leaves, when about to 

 moult or pass into the pupa state ; though Messrs. Kirby and 

 Spence, with a love for the marvellous which is always apt to 

 carry them astray, have in one instance singularly misunderstood 

 the nature of this precautionary measure. " The caterpillar of 

 a little moth," we are told, " knows how to imitate the air-pump, 

 producing a vacuum, when necessary for its purpose, without any 



