STONE-MASON CATERPILLARS. 229 



out difficulty. The moth itself is very much hke the 

 common clothes-moth in form,- but is of a gilded 

 bronze colour, and considerably smaller. 



In the same locality, M. de Maupertuis found a 

 numerous brood of small caterpillars, which employed 

 grains of stone, not, hke the preceding, tor building 

 feeding tents, but for their cocoons. This caterpillar 

 was of a brownish-grey colour, with a white line 

 along the back, on each side of which were tufts of 

 hair. The cocoons which it built were oval, and less 

 in size than a hazel nut, the grains of the stone being 

 skilfully woven into irregular meshes of silk. 



In June, 1829, we found a numerous encampment 

 of the tent-building caterpillars described by MM. 

 de la Voye and Reaumur, on the brick wall of a gar- 

 den at Blackheath, Kent.* They were so very small, 

 however, and so like the lichen on the wall, that, had 

 not our attention been previously directed to their 

 habits, we should have considered them as portions of 

 the wall; for not one of them was in motion, and it 

 was only by the neat, turbinated, conical form in which 

 they had constructed their habitations, that we detected 

 them. We tried the experiment above-mentioned, of 

 ejecting one of the caterpillars from its tent, in order 

 to watch its proceedings when constructing another; 

 but probably its haste to procure shelter, or the arti- 

 ficial circumstances into which it was thrown, influ- 

 enced its operations, for it did not form so good a 

 tent as the first, the texture of the walls being much 

 slighter, while it was more rounded at the apex, and 

 of course not so elegant. Reaumur found, in all his 

 similar experiments, that the new structure equalled 

 the old; but most of the trials of this kind which we 

 have made correspond with the inferiority which we 

 have here recorded. The process indeed is the same, 



* J. R. 

 VOL IV. 20 



