288 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



future larva springing from the egg deposited in them by the parent female, 

 and as a storehouse for its food ; but in another class of insect habitations 

 the house itself serves both for the protection of the occupant and also 

 for its subsistence, the larva eating the inner portion of its very walls. 

 Tiiis is the case with the habitations constructed for their future larva by 

 the beautiful weevils or long-snouted beetles of the genera JRhynchites, 

 Atteluhus, and Apodenis, which consist of the whole, or more commonly 

 a part, of a leaf of the tree on which they are to feed, rolled up with 

 great art by the mother into a sort of cylinder sometimes resembling a 

 little horn and at others a wallet more or less elongated, thus giving a 

 singular appearance to the leaves so treated, which, while their basal por- 

 tion retains its usual form, have their extremities metamorphosed into these 

 odd-looking appendages. A very interesting description of the mode in 

 which these nests are constructed has been lately given by M. Huber of 

 Geneva^ who has detailed the procedures of Rhjnchitcs Bacchus with 

 ihe leaves of the vine, of R. Populi with those of the poplar, of R. Betults 

 with those of the beech and birch, of Apoderus Coryli with those of the 

 hazle, and of Attelabus CurcuUonoidcs with those of the oak, of which 

 last, as more fully described by M. Goureau, I will give you a short account. 

 The female having deposited a single egg, which adheres by its natural 

 gluten, near the mid-rib of the end of the upper side of the leaf she has 

 selected, passes to the under surface, and slightly but repeatedly gnaws 

 with her small jaws both the mid-rib and epidermis in every part until both 

 are rendered perfectly pliable. If the leaf be a sn)all one she treats the 

 whole of it in this way and rolls up the whole ; if a large one she thus 

 prepares only about one third or one half of it, and cuts it across, all 

 except the mid-rib, with her jaws at the proper point, so as to leave a 

 sufficient extent of pliable leaf for her operations. Her next business is 

 to roll up this terminal portion of the leaf, in effecting which she thus 

 proceeds. First she folds it together longitudinally so as to cover her egg, 

 the mid-rib forming one edge of the folded part and its marginal serratures 

 the other point. Next she |)laces herself at a right angle with the mid-rib, 

 towards wliich her tail is directed while her head points to the serratures, 

 and fixing the claws of her two hind left legs into the leaf, she employs 

 those of the two hind right legs to pull the point of it towards her ; and 

 by a repetition of these manoeuvres, not easily described, she at last succeeds 

 in rolling the whole into a little cylinder having at one end the mid-rib 

 whose spirals there resemble those of the main-spring of a watch, and at 

 the other, which is of a less regular shape, the serratures of the leaf, so 

 pushed in by means of her trunk and fore-legs as to retain the whole in 

 its cylindrical form. The larva proceeding from the egg thus deposited 

 towards the end of May is hatched early in June and never quits the 

 habitation which its provident and truly laborious mother (for each egg 

 requires its separate leaf and the long process above described) has pre- 

 pared for it, eating in succession the different rolls of its cylinder, till it has 

 attained its full growth^. 



Under this head, too, may be most conveniently arranged the very 



• Mimoirrs dr la Societi ih Pliy^iijuc et d'Histoire Naturelle de Gendve, vin.'2de partie, 

 18^9, qnole(t lo M. Goureau, Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, x. 21. 

 « Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, x. 21—27. 



