I 



298 THE SCHOOL OF REAUMUR 



ligniperda),^ and is obliged to speak of its larva 

 *' the large red and flesh-coloured wood-eating cater- 

 pillar." It was long before he succeeded in rearing the 

 pupa and moth. When he captured the larvae, whiclii| 

 he found creeping on the ground under trees, he offered 

 them leaves of all the plants which grew about, but they^ 

 refused to feed on any of them, and soon perished o» 

 hunger. A friend happened one day to take Koesel to 

 see an oak tree which was beset with these larvae ; many 

 of them lay between the bark and the wood in a dark 

 ill- smelling slime ; others had eaten their way into th 

 solid wood. Having thus learned that his large re 

 caterpillars were wood-borers, Eoesel was able to keep 

 them alive and study their habits. When alarmed, they 

 sought to defend themselves by biting and ejecting a 

 reddish fluid from the mouth. Some captive larvae 

 escaped from a glass dish, which had been left for a few 

 minutes. Being curious to find out how they travelled 

 up the smooth surface, Koesel put them back into the 

 dish, and watched their proceedings. He found that 

 they paid out a silken thread from the mouth, attaching 

 it to the glass on the right and left sides alternately ; 

 this gave a sufficient foothold, and enabled the larvae t 

 climb up the glass. It was not easy to keep them im 

 prisoned ; when the glass vessel was closed by a wooden' 

 lid they gnawed the wood, and it was found necessary 

 to use a metal lid, and bind it firmly to the vessel. 

 Eoesel was surprised to find that his caterpillars 

 remained unchanged through the winter, and that their 

 life-history occupied at least two years. During the 



iVol. I, Sammlung iv, pp. 113-128, pi. xviii, xix (1741). Reaumur (Vol. I, 

 pp. 308-311, pi. xvii, figs. 1-7) had already given a slight account of the Goat- 

 moth. Koesel does not quote Reaumur, nor does Lyonet quote either of them 

 the practice of reference to earlier writers was not yet established, thougl 

 not unknown. 



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