EVENINGS AT THE MICROSCOPE. 



felting property is feebler still, yielded only 1,850 teeth 

 per inch. And this connexion of good felting quality with 

 the number and sharpness of the sheathing scales, is found 

 to be invariable. 



The hairs of many insects are curious and interesting. 

 Here you may see the head of the hive bee, which is 

 moderately clothed with hair; each hair is slender and 

 pointed, and is beset with a multitude of other short hairs, 

 which project from the main stem, and stand out at an 

 angle : these are set on in a spiral order. Here, again, is 

 one of the hinder legs of the same bee : the yellow hair, 

 which you can see with the naked eye, consists of strong, 

 horny, curved 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 cater- 

 pillar (that of the Oak Egger Moth, I be- 

 lieve) ; they appear, when highly magnified, 

 like stout horny rods drawn out to a sharp 

 point, and sending forth alternate short 

 pointed spines, which scarcely project from 

 the line of the axis. 



But there is scarcely any hair more curious 

 than that of a troublesome grub in museums 

 and cabinets, the larva of Dermestes lardarius, 

 which lives upon fur-skins, and any dried 

 TIP OF HAIR OF animal substances. It has a cylindrical shaft, 

 DKRMESTES. w hi c h is covered with whorls of large close-set 

 spines, four or five in each whorl, closely succeeding each 

 other ; the upper part of the shaft is surrounded by a 

 whorl of larger and more knotted spines, and the extremity 



