Tent-Making Caterpillars. 245 



was not a little interesting to watch its ingenious operations 

 while it was making its tent from the membranes prepared 

 as we have just described. These, as Beaumur has re- 

 marked, are in fact to the insect like a piece of cloth in the 

 hands of a tailor ; and no tailor could cut out a shape with 

 more neatness and dexterity than this little workman does. 

 As the caterpillar is furnished in its mandibles with an 

 excellent pair of scissors, this may not appear to be a diffi- 

 cult task ; yet, when we examine the matter more minutely, 

 we find that the peculiar shape of the two extremities re- 

 quires different curvatures, and this, of course, renders the 

 operation no less complex, as Eeaumur subjoins, than the 

 shaping of the pieces of cloth for a coat.* The insect, in 

 fact, shapes the membranes slightly convex on one side and 

 concave on the other, and at one end twice as large as the 

 other. In the instance which we observed, beginning at the 

 larger end, it bent them gently on each side by pressing 

 them with its body thrown into a curve. We have not said 

 it cuts., but shapes its materials ; for it must be obvious that 

 if the insect had cut both the membranes at this stage of its 

 operations, the pieces would have fallen and carried it along 

 with them. 



To obviate such an accident it proceeded to join the 

 two edges, and secure them firmly with silk, before it made 

 a single incision to detach them. When it had in this 

 manner joined the two edges along one of the sides, it 

 inserted its head on the outside of the joining, first at one 

 end and then at the other, gnawing the fibres till that 

 whole side was separated. It proceeded in the same manner 

 with the other side, joining the edges before it cut them : 

 and when it arrived at the last fibre, the only remaining 

 support of its now finished tent, it took the precaution, 

 before snipping it, to moor the whole to the uncut part of 

 the leaf by a cable of its own silk. Consequently, when it 

 does cut the last nervure, it is secure from falling, and can 

 then travel along the leaf, carrying its tent on its back, as a 

 snail does its shell. (J. R.) 



* ' Mem. Iliot, Insect.' iii. p. 106. 



