244 LEAF-CUTTERS. 



according to their species, are accustomed to exercise their 

 ingenuity in forms of infinite variety. That of the simple 

 scroll 1 is very commonly exemplified in the leaves of the lilac 

 and the oak, almost as soon as they expand. These are formed 

 by rolling the leaf from its extreme point towards the stalk, 

 an operation which the caterpillar is only enabled to accom- 

 plish by the aiding exercise of its art of weaving, since it is by 

 silken threads attached to the leaf that he contrives to pull it 

 into the desired form, wherein it is retained by silken braces. 

 These hold-fasts, which to the roll of the lilac-leaf are com- 

 paratively slender, are numerous and strongly doubled in that 

 of the oak, to meet, seemingly, the greater resistance of its 

 stiffer fibre. The leaf-rollers which thus presume to bend to 

 their purpose the foliage of the forest's monarch (and that 

 often to a prodigious and most mischievous extent) assume, 

 in the month of June, the shape of little green moths, 2 

 which, pretty and innocent as they look, are progenitors of 

 caterpillar marauders resembling those which they have been 

 themselves. 



Portions of leaves, as well as entire ones, are sometimes 

 employed in the operations of leaf-rolling caterpillars, which, 

 in these instances, using their jaws with all the precision of 

 well-directed scissors, manage to cut out, but without entirely 

 cutting off, a piece of material shaped exactly to their pur- 

 pose. A worker of this description is a little smooth greenish- 

 white caterpillar, which, out of a piece of sorrel-leaf thus 

 excised and not detached, forms a sort of conical pyramid, 

 composed of five or six enwrapping folds. Having cut out 

 the required segment, the cunning artificer rolls it slowly up 

 by means of threads attached to the surface of the leaf, " and 

 then, having cut in a different direction, sets the cone upright 

 by weaving other threads attached to the centre of the roll and 

 the plane of the leaf, upon which it throws the weight of its 



1 Vignette. 2 Tortrix viridana, (green oak moth). 



