Weavers and Spinners. 



leave off tearing out its hairs until it has entirely 

 stripped them off. When the caterpillar has taken 

 between its jaws and torn out a whole tuft of hair, the 

 head carries it and deposits it on some part of the lower 

 surface of the cocoon ; but it does not leave the hairs 

 of such a large parcel together. The next moment 

 one sees its head moving about very quickly; then, 

 taking a portion of the hairs from the little heap, it 

 distributes them about on the neighbouring parts of 

 the cocoon. If one opens one of these shells before 

 the caterpillar has become a chrysalis, the larva, which 

 is quite naked, and which was only known by its hair, 

 can be no longer recognized." 



The larva of the Tiger Moth, that hairy caterpillar 

 which children call the " Woolly Bear," also makes use 

 of its hairs for strengthening the tissues of its cocoon, 

 but does not heroically pluck them out, Reaumur stat- 

 ing that it cuts them off. The operations of those 

 caterpillars which excavate a chamber beneath the sur- 

 face of the soil in which to pupate, often lining it with 

 a thick tapestry of silk or weaving grains of earth into 

 the silken cocoon, are very difficult to observe. Reaumur, 

 in the course of his numerous experiments and re- 

 searches, was enabled to witness the reconstruction of 

 part of the walls of the earth and silk cocoon formed 

 by the caterpillar of the Mullein Moth by taking one 

 from the ground, partially tearing it open, and placing 

 it in a glass vessel containing some earth. The cater- 

 pillar at once started to repair its damaged cocoon, and 

 began by coming almost entirely out. It moved its 

 head forwards as far as was necessary to enable it to 

 seize a particle of earth. As soon as it had got its load 



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