GRAIN MOTH. 275 



towards autumn, when his stock of flour is exhausted, escapes 

 from the pinch of famine and the nip of frost into the gentle 

 arms of sleep, having previously taken care to convert the 

 hollowed grain into a soft warm dormitory, tapestried with 

 silk. There, in the form of chrysalis, he slumbers through the 

 winter, to burst forth, with the spring, an image of his silver- 

 winged parent. 



We have just said that this tiny robber enters his barley-corn 

 through a hole no bigger than that caused by a pin, too small 

 therefore to afford egress to anything in the shape of a Moth, 

 unless assumed by a veritable Fairy; but this seeming diffi- 

 culty is entirely removed by one of those admirable contri- 

 vances, instinctive and prospective, which are so frequently met 

 with in insect economy. The last act of the little caterpillar, 

 before it betakes itself to its winter's nap, is to shape with its 

 jaws a half-cut doorway in the skin of the hollow grain, which, 

 though on the outside appearing whole, presently gives way, 

 when pushed from within, for the exit of the newly winged Moth. 



Of the same Tinea family, but distinguished from the Grain 

 Moths by their appetite for animal instead of vegetable food, 

 are the well-known Clothes' Moths,* lovers of fur, wool, 

 tapestry, and dried insect specimens. Most people are well 

 enough acquainted, to their cost, with the destructive opera- 

 tions of these wardrobe pests; but some, possibly, maybe 

 ignorant that muffs and silks and stuffs afford food, not only 



* Tinea, pellionella. 



