2i8 TRUE TALES OF THE INSECTS. 



are minute, unjointed, scarcely visible to the naked eye ; 

 but the feet, though very short and thick, are well 

 articulated. It is this structure of the legs which at 

 once distinguishes this imago from the larva ; in this 

 respect also it differs from the female of Oiketicus kirbii 

 (see Fig. 40). 



Having filled the bottom of their puparium with their 

 ova, packed in the down rubbed from their own body, 

 these females do not long survive. The moth is then 

 literally nothing but thin skin. Reduced to a shrivelled, 

 dried, and scarcely animated morsel of this matter, she 

 either presses herself through the opening of the case, 

 or, exhausted, the last feeble flicker of life burnt out, 

 expires within. 



