248 Insect Architecture. 



curtain of the same material, to shut up the entire aper- 

 ture. 



It is usual for insects which form similar structures to 

 issue, when they assume the winged state, from the broader 

 end of their habitation ; but our little stone-mason proceeds 

 in a different manner. It leaves open the apex of the cone 

 from the first, for the purpose of ejecting its excrements, 

 and latterly it enlarges this opening a little, to allow of a 

 free exit when it acquires wings ; taking care, however, 

 to spin over it a canopy of silk, as a temporary protection, 

 which it can afterwards burst through without difficulty. 

 The moth itself is very much like the .common clothes-moth 

 in form, but is of a gilded-bronze colour, and considerably 

 smaller. 



In the same locality, M. de Maupertuis found a nume- 

 rous brood of small caterpillars, which employed grains of 

 stone, not, like the preceding, for building feeding-tents, 

 but for their cocoons. This caterpillar was of a brownish- 

 grey colour, with a white line along the back, on each side 

 of which were tufts of hair. The cocoons which it built 

 were oval, and less in size than a hazel-nut, the grains of 

 the stone being skilfully woven into irregular meshes of 

 silk. 



In June, 1829, we found a numerous encampment of the 

 tent-building caterpillars described by MM. de la Voye 

 and Reaumur, on the brick wall of a garden at Blackheath, 

 Kent. (J. R.) They were so very small, however, and 

 so like the lichen on the wall, that had not our attention 

 been previously directed to their habits, we should have 

 considered them as portions of the wall ; for not one of 

 them was in motion, and it was only by the neat, turbi- 

 nated, conical form in which they had constructed their 

 habitations that we detected them. We tried the experi- 

 ment above mentioned, of ejecting one of the caterpillars 

 from its tent, in order to watch its proceedings when con- 

 structing another ; but probably its haste to procure shelter, 

 or the artificial circumstances into which it was thrown, 

 influenced its operations, for it did not form so good a tent 



