188 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



Should one of those hairy caterpillars, when feeding 

 near the top of a plant, be disturbed or alarmed, it 

 instantly coils itself up into a ball and drops among 

 the grass. Here it is not only difficult to discover, 

 but equally so to lay hold of it; for the pliancy and 

 smoothness of the hair causes it to slip through the 

 fingers as readily almost as quicksilver. The grub 

 of the museum beetle {^nthrenus Miiseorum, Fabr.), 

 the pest of our cabinets, affords another example of 

 the same circumstance, being covered with tufts of 

 diverging hairs which cause it to glide through the 

 fingers as if they had been oiled. The six long tufts 

 at the tail, which it can erect at pleasure, are com- 

 posed of hairs, which rise from a bulb of the form of 

 a halberd, and are curiously jointed with cones through 

 their whole extent. The bead wood-louse {Armadil- 

 lo inilgaris, Cuvier), though not furnished with 

 hairs, rolls itself up into a round b^ll, trusting to the 

 fine polish of its back for escape, and to its hardness 

 for defence. ' One of our maid-servants,' says 

 Swammerdam, ' once found a number of these wood- 

 lice in the garden contracted into round balls, and 

 thinking she had found a kind of coral beads she be- 

 gan to put them one after another on a thread; it soon 

 happened that the little creatures, being obliged to 

 throw off" the mask, resumed their motions: on seeing 

 which, she was so greatly astonished, that she flung 

 down both them and the thread in great haste, crying 

 out, and running away.'* 



The hairs with which the caterpillars of some of 

 our finest native butterflies are furnished, are some- 

 what of the nature of bristles or thorns, being hard, 

 inflexible, and sharply pointed. This is the case with 

 the caterpillars of all the fan-winged butterflies 

 {Vanessce). We have alluded to that of the pea- 



* Svvammertlam, pt i, p. 174. 



