HAIRS, FEATHERS, AND SCALES. 15 



stand out at an angle : these are set on in a spiral order. 

 Here again, is one of the hinder legs of the same bee : 

 the yellow hair, which you can see with the naked eye, 

 consists of strong, homy, curved spines, each of which 

 is scored obliquely, like a butcher's steel. These legs 

 are used, as you are well aware, to brush off the pollen 

 from the anthers of flowers, wherewith the substance 

 called bee-bread, the food of the grubs, is made ; and 

 in this specimen, you may see hundreds of the beautiful 

 oval pollen-grains entangled among these formidable 

 looking spines. 



These rusty hairs are from a large caterpillar (that 

 of the Oak Egger Moth, I believe) ; they appear, when 

 highly magnified, like stout horny rods drawn out to an 

 acute point, and sending forth alternate 

 short pointed spines, which scarcely project 

 from the line of the axis. 



But there is scarcely any hair more curi- 

 ous than that of a troublesome grub in mu- j 

 seiims and cabinets, the larva of Dermestes 

 lardarius, which lives upon fur-skins, and 

 any dried animal substances. It has a cyl- 

 indrical shaft, which is covered with whorls 

 of large close-set spines, four or five in each 

 whorl, closely succeeding each other ; the 

 upper part of the shaft is surrounded by a 

 whorl of larger and more knotted spines, and 

 the extremity is furnished with six or seven 

 large filaments, which appear to have aiip op nim ov 

 knob-like hinge in the middle, by Avhich 

 they are bent up on themselves. 



The feathers of Birds are essentially hairs. That 

 shrivelled membrane which we pull out of the interior 



