LEAF-MINERS. 247 



slight tenure of a fragile foot-stalk ; but compared with theirs, 

 indeed, without comparison his lot seems a highly favoured 

 one. His path, a covered way, is through a leaf, often of the 

 rose ; and each step of progression (for labour he has none) 

 would seem an act of self-gratification, as the little Sybarite, 

 lodged between the upper and the lower membranes of the 

 leaf, eats onwards through its soft green pulp, from the point 

 whence he issued from the egg even to that which terminates 

 his caterpillar career. Thus eating and progressing, he pro- 

 duces, by removal of the excavated pulp, a visible track, ap- 

 pearing on the leaf's surface like a broad white tortuous line, 

 with a dark one running through its centre. This has been 

 compared to a valley watered by a winding stream a "happy 

 valley," we may well suppose it, to its little solitary inhabit- 

 ant, because, unlike the Abyssinian Prince, he knows no wish 

 to leave it. And truly, as we have said, the leaf-mining cater- 

 pillar would seem to have drawn a prize in the lottery or 

 allotment of insect life, inasmuch, at least, as his covered 

 position serves as a defence from various perils and enemies 

 to which some of his brethren are openly exposed, and from 

 which others (as he of the "tent" and the "roll") are only 

 protected by laborious exertion of mechanic skill. 



On first waking into life, the leaf-miner finds himself, through 

 the exercise of maternal care instinctively and prospectively 

 'employed, placed on the surface of his green patrimony, the 

 leaf exactly suited to his appetite, into the depths of which (a 



