284 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



is still clinging to a branch, it can retreat into the house and 

 press the mouth so firmly agaiust the branch that it is closed 

 effectively, just as a limpet shelters its soft body by pressing the 

 top of the shell against the rock. Or, if detached, it can pull 

 the lips together and thus shut itself up in its strange house as 

 completely as a box tortoise in its shell. 



Not only does the creature reside in this nest during its larval 

 condition, but also passes the pupal stage in it, and sometimes 

 the whole of its life. As soon as it ceases from feeding, and is 

 about to become a pupa, it retires far into its cell, shuts up the 

 mouth, throws off its last caterpillar skin, and there remains 

 until the larva has become a perfect insect. Should the moth 

 be of the male sex, it creeps out of the domicile and speedily 

 takes to wing, employing itself in the great object of its life, 

 that of seeking a mate. 



In ordinary cases, to find a mate seems to be no difiicult task, 

 but the House-builder Moth has no ordinary obstacles to over- 

 come. The female never leaves her cell, for she' would be more 

 helpless as a moth than as a caterpillar. Among the British 

 moths we have several species in which the females are 

 wingless, but at all events they do look like moths which have 

 been deprived of wings, and are able to move about with toler- 

 able freedom. Of these wingless females, the common Vapourer 

 moth {Orgyia antiqua), is a familiar example, its fat, rounded 

 abdomen and little truncated rudiments of wings being known to 

 all collectors. 



But the female House-builder Moth is as utterly helpless a 

 being as can well be conceived. She has not the least vestige 

 of wings, and but the smallest indications of legs or antennae. 

 None but an entomologist would tajie her for a lepidopterous 

 insect, or even for an insect at all, for she looks like a fat, 

 dowu-covered grub, with very feeble limbs, which can scarcely 

 support the body, and with antennae that merely consist of a 

 few rounded joints, entirely unlike the beautiful feathered forms 

 which decorate the male. 



So utterly unlike a moth is this creature, that our most skilful 

 entomologists are much perplexed as to the position which the 

 insect ought to occupy. Mr. Westwood states that they are "the 

 most imperfect of all lepidopterous insects, and even less favoured 

 than their larva, which they considerably resemble;" while 



