404 Insect Architecture. 



a proportionate number of punctures to procure materials 

 for the future habitation of her young progeny. As in the 

 former case, also, each of these eggs becomes (as we may 

 suppose) surrounded with the sap of the rose, enclosed in a 

 pellicle of gluten. The gluten, however, of the bedeguar 

 insect is not, it would appear, sufficiently tenacious to con- 

 fine the flowing sap within the dimensions of any of the 

 little clustered globes containing the eggs, for it oozes out 

 from numerous cracks or pores in the pellicle ; which cracks 

 or pores, however, are not large enough to admit a human 

 hair. But this, so far from being a defect in the glutinous 

 pellicle of the bedeguar fly, is, as we shall presently see, of 

 great utility. The sap which issues from each of these 

 pores, instead of being evaporated and lost, shoots out into a 

 reddish-coloured, fibrous bristle. 



It is about half an inch long, and, from the natural ten- 

 dency of the sap of the rose-tree to form prickles, these are 

 all over studded with weak pricklets. The bedeguar, 

 accordingly, when fully formed, has some resemblance, at a 

 little distance, to a tuft of reddish-brown hair or moss stuck 

 upon the branch. Sometimes this tuft is as large as a small 

 apple, and of a rounded but irregular shape ; at other times 

 it is smaller, and in one instance mentioned by Eeaumur, 

 only a single egg had been laid on a rose-leaf, and, conse- 

 quently, only one tuft was produced. Each member of the 

 congeries is furnished with its own tuft of bristles, arising 

 from the little hollow globe in which the egg or the grub is 

 lodged. 



The prospective wisdom of this curious structure is 

 admirable. The bedeguar grubs live in their cells through 

 the winter, and as their domicile is usually on one of the 

 highest branches, it must be exposed to every severity of the 

 weather. But the close, non-conducting, warm, mossy collec- 

 tion of bristles, with which it is surrounded, forms for the 

 soft, tender grubs a snug protection against the winter's 

 cold, till, through the influence of the warmth of the succeed- 

 ing summer, they undergo their final change into the winged 

 state ; preparatory to which they eat their way with their 



