MINERS 59 



are all very small moths — they include the smallest 

 known moth — of the kind that should one by 

 mischance get into the house, is pounced upon as 

 '' one of those horrid clothes moths," though all 

 leaf-miners are perfectly innocent of the crimes 

 perpetrated by clothes moths. 



The mines of some of these larvae must be familiar 

 to all who take any notice of natural objects in 

 the country. Every garden that contains a few 

 rose-bushes will furnish examples ready to hand, 

 and outside it the first bramble-bush will show us 

 some fine examples of mined leaves. The effect of 

 the little miners' industry is to clear out the cellular 

 matter between the upper and lower skins of the 

 leaf. The miner works rather erratically and 

 follows a serpentine course, perhaps roughly follow- 

 ing the margins of the leaf, sometimes doubling 

 upon itself and even crossing an earlier route. As 

 one looks at a leaf where the miner has finished, 

 or all but finished his work, it is possible to follow 

 his course by observing that as he increases in size 

 the mine becomes broader. 



Mr. Alfred Sich, F.E.S., who has made a special 

 study of these minute moths, has given us from 

 his own observations a sketch of the life-history of 

 De Geer's Leaf-miner {Nefticula anomelella), which 

 he says scarcely differs from that pubHshed by De 

 Geer in 1752. This is the species whose mines are 

 commonly seen upon the leaflets of the rose. The 

 moth glues her almost colourless tg^ to the under- 

 side of the leaf, and the young caterpillar bores 



