HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 253 



the house itself serves both for the protection of the occupant and also for 

 its subsistence, the larva eating the inner portion of its very walls. 



This is the case with the habitations constructed for their future larvae 

 by the beautiful weevils or long-snouted beetles of the genera Rhynchites, 

 Attelabus, and Apoderus, which consist of the whole, or more commonly a 

 part, of a leaf of the tree on which they are to feed, rolled up with great 

 art by the mother into a sort of cylinder sometimes resembling a little 

 horn, and at others a wallet more or less elongated, thus giving a singular 

 appearance to the leaves so treated, which, while their basal portion re- 

 tains its usual form, have their extremities metamorphosed into these odd- 

 looking appendages. A very interesting description of the mode in which 

 these nests are constructed has been lately given by M. Huber of Geneva *, 

 who has detailed the procedures of Rhynchites Bacchus with the leaves 

 of the vine, of R. Populi with those of the poplar, of R. Betulce with 

 those of the beech and birch, of Apoderus Coryli with those of the 

 hazel, and of Attelabus Curculionoides with those of the oak, of which last, 

 as more fully described by M. Goureau, I will give you a short account. 

 The female having deposited a single egg, which adheres by its natural 

 gluten, near the mid-rib of the end of the upper side of the leaf she has 

 selected, passes to the under surface, and slightly but repeatedly gnaws 

 with her small jaws both the mid-rib and epidermis in every part until 

 both are rendered perfectly pliable. If the leaf be a small one, she treats 

 the whole of it in this way and rolls up the whole ; if a large one, she thus 

 prepares only about one-third or one-half of it, and cuts it across, all except 

 the mid-rib, with her jaws at the proper point, so as to leave a sufficient 

 extent of pliable leaf for her operations. Her next business is to roll up 

 this terminal portion of the leaf, in effecting which she thus proceeds. 

 First she folds it together longitudinally so as to cover her egg, the mid- 

 rib forming one edge of the folded part, and its marginal serratures the 

 other. Next she places herself at a right angle with the mid-rib, towards 

 which her tail is directed while her head points to the serratures ; and fix- 

 ing the claws of her two hind left legs into the leaf, she employs those of 

 the two hind right legs to pull the point of it toward her ; and by a repe- 

 tition of these manoeuvres, not easily described, she at last succeeds in 

 rolling the whole into a little cylinder having at one end the mid-rib whose 

 spirals there resemble those of the main-spring of a watch, and at the 

 other, which is of a less regular shape, the serratures of the leaf, so pushed 

 in by means of her trunk and fore-legs as to retain the whole in its cylin- 

 drical form. The larva proceeding from the egg thus deposited towards 

 the end of May is hatched early in June, and never quits the habitation 

 which its provident and truly laborious mother (for each egg requires its 

 separate leaf and the long process above described) has prepared for it, 

 eating in succession the different rolls of its cylinder, till it has attained its 

 full growth. 8 



Under this head, too, may be most conveniently arranged the very sin- 

 gular habitations of the Iarva3 of the Linnean genus Cynips, the gall-fly, 

 though they can with no propriety be said to be constructed by the mother, 

 who, provided with an instrument as potent as an enchanter's wand, has 



* Mkmoires de la Societe de Physique et (PHistoire Naturelle de Geneve^ viii. 2me 

 partie, 1839, quoted by M. Goureau, Ann. Soc. Ent. de, France, x. 21. 

 Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, x. 21 27. 



