274 CHAIN MOTH. 



caterpillar shape, is gnawing, unseen, at the root of the insect- 

 haunted plant. This is the White Ghost, which often in the 

 shades of evening, flits across our path, chased by a dark pur- 

 suing demon, in the form of a bat, who knows well enough 

 that for him the Ghost Moth is no airy shape, but a substantial 

 reality, (if not of flesh and blood,) of juices and muscles, which, 

 if happily attained, will afford him a delicious supper. 



Our gooseberries and currants, plums, pears, apples, apri- 

 cots, and grapes, are all, both in foliage and in fruit, more or 

 less subject to insect mischiefs, of which parent Moths have 

 been the fertile sources. 



Quitting the garden for the homestead and the house, we 

 now come to the third and fourth divisions of our consuming 

 host, the domestic invaders of our granaries, garments, and 

 good-nature. These belong chiefly to a family of tiny Moths, 

 called Tinece, distinguished as much for the ingenious formation 

 of their own habitations or clothing, as for the ravages they 

 are accustomed to commit within and upon ours. There is a 

 certain member of this Tinea family* (one of the smallest of 

 the crew) which delights to play her pranks in the farmer's 

 granary. She there deposits perhaps a score of eggs on a 

 corn of wheat or of barley, and no sooner are the caterpillar 

 mischiefs hatched than they disperse, each choosing for himself 

 a single grain to be at once his habitation and his hoard. 

 Gnawing an entrance scarce bigger than a pin-hole, the little 

 devourer takes possession, revels in plenty and security, and 



* Tinta hordei. 



