HAIRS, FEATHERS, AND SCALES 27 



horny, curved spines, each of which is scored obliquely, 

 like a butcher's steel. These legs, are used, as you are well 

 aware, to brush off the pollen from the anthers of flowers, 

 wherewith the substance called bee-bread, the food of the 

 grubs, is made; and in this specimen you may see hun- 

 dreds of the beautiful oval pollen- grains entangled among 

 these formidable looking spines. 



These rusty hairs are from a large caterpillar (that of 

 the Oak Egger Moth, I believe); they appear, when highly 

 magnified, like stout horny rods drawn out to an acute 

 point, and sending forth alternate short pointed spines, 

 which scarcely project from the line of the axis. 



But there is scarcely any hair more curious than that 

 of a troublesome grub in museums and cabi- 

 nets, the larva of Dermestes lardarius, which 

 lives upon fur-skins, and any dried animal 

 substances. It has a cylindrical shaft, which 

 is covered with whorls of large close- set spines, 

 four or five in each whorl, closely succeeding 

 each other; the upper part of the shaft is sur- 

 rounded by a whorl of larger and more knotted 

 spines, and the extremity is furnished with six 

 or seven large filaments, which appear to have 

 a knob-like hinge in the middle, by which they 

 are bent up on themselves. 



The feathers of Birds are essentially hairs. TIP OF HAIR or 

 That shrivelled membrane which we pull out 

 of the interior of a quill when we make a pen is the medul- 

 lary portion dried. There is a beautiful contrivance in 

 the barbs of most feathers, which I will illustrate by this 

 feather from the body- plumage of the domestic fowl. 

 Every one must have observed the regular arrangement 



