MUFF-MAKERS. 243 



attending the progress of their occupants, each a small prettily- 

 striped caterpillar, which, with head and shoulders protruded, 

 thus travels under cover of what we may call a tent of sticks. 

 The sticks, however, which cover its exterior, form in fact 

 only a protecting palisade attached to a silk- woven central 

 case, the real tent which surrounds the body of its ingenious 

 architect. 



The " muff-makers" among moths do not show as much 

 ingenuity as the moths among muffs in the manufacture of 

 their body coats; but they display even superior tact and 

 shrewdness in the appropriation of a ready-made article, admi- 

 rably adapted to serve their turn. The muffs in question are 

 of vegetable fur, that short silky down which clothes the seed- 

 catkins of the palm-willow, and is often chosen by a certain 

 moth caterpillar to clothe himself. With this felonious intent, 

 he burrows into the seed for the protection of which the furry 

 coat was originally designed, lines it with silk, detaches it 

 from the parent stem, then walks away, clothed a la Russe, to 

 the annihilation of some incipient willow. These vegetable 

 muffs, with their insect appropriators, are sometimes found 

 floating on the water beneath the pilfered tree, and it is sug- 

 gested by Rennie that the buoyant material of this muff-like 

 tent might be intended to furnish its little occupant with a life- 

 boat when blown from off its native willow. 



There is another and numerous company of caterpillar arti- 

 sans, which, from their mode of leaf appropriation, have been 

 designated Leaf-rollers. Though the labours of this industrious 

 class do not correspond (like the above) with any particular 

 craft of human exercise, they are much too ingenious, as well 

 as in their aggregate of mischief too important, to be passed, 

 over without notice, either here or within " their green shops '* 

 the gardens, hedges, forests, where throughout the summer 

 they are to be seen incessantly at work. 



There is scarcely a single tree or plant which does not afford 

 material for some caterpillar of the leaf-rolling crew, which, 



