LEAF-MINER. 



247 



of the leaf, eats onwards through its soft green pulp, from the 

 point whence he issued from the egg even to that which ter- 

 minates his caterpillar career. Thus eating and progressing, 

 he produces, by removal of the excavated pulp, a visible track, 

 appearing on the leaf's surface like a broad white tortuous 

 line, with a dark one running through its centre. 



On first waking into life, the leaf-miner finds himself, 

 through the exercise of maternal care instinctively and pro- 

 spectively employed, placed on the "surface of his green patri- 

 mony, the leaf exactly suited to his appetite, into the depths 

 of which (a depth comprised within the thickness of a sheet 

 of paper) he at once plunges, pursues, for his appointed span, 

 his safe and luxurious way, then, in a quiet little plain or 

 dell, which forms the termination of his " happy valley," passes 

 the period of his aurelian slumber, to emerge thence a minute 

 moth. 



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