ROSE-LEAF ROLLER. 107 



little brown black-headed caterpillar. 1 Secure from wind and 

 weather, this little imp here feasts at leisure, and nips in the 

 bud many an infant rose, whose cradling leaflets, intended for 

 its own protection, only serve to conceal the proceedings of its 

 destroyer. 



Turning from rose to lilac, we find numbers of its leaves 

 rolled up, both cross and lengthwise, their return to a natural 

 position being prevented by silken stays or braces. These are 

 the rollings and weavings of a caterpillar, 2 which in due season 

 will become, as its mother was before it, a small chocolate- 

 coloured moth, like others, a provident parent, who took good 

 care to lay her eggs on the leaf best suited for the exercise of 

 her offspring's ingenuity and appetite. 



The hop-vine and the burdock are sometimes seen to droop 

 their leaves and stalks without any apparent cause. The 

 rational might suppose them fainting under the influence of 

 summer heat ; the ignorant imagine them struck by what they 

 call a blight ; the fanciful would have declared, in days of 

 greater superstition, that they had been exposed to some " evil 

 eye " of ghost, or witch, or goblin ; and, as it happens, a 

 ghost is really at the bottom of the mystery, for a Ghost Moth? 

 in its caterpillar shape, is gnawing, unseen, at the root of the 

 insect-haunted plant. 



Quitting the garden for the homestead and the house, we 

 now come to the third and fourth divisions of our consuming 

 host, the domestic invaders of our granaries, garments, and 

 good-nature. These belong chiefly to a family of tiny Moths, 

 called Tine<Bj distinguished as much for the ingenious forma- 

 tion of their own habitations or clothing, as for the ravages 

 they are accustomed to commit within and upon ours. There 

 is a certain member of this Tinea family 4 (one of the smallest 

 of the crew) which delights to play her pranks in the farmer's 

 granary. She there deposits perhaps a score of eggs on a corn 



1 Lozotcenia rosana. 2 Lozottcnia ribeana. 



3 Hepialus humuli. * Tinea hcrdei. 



