4 Micro-Lepidojjtera. 



nators. We need but watch the persistent action of those busy 

 jaws to be very sure that its abductors and adductors are in 

 perfection ; whilst to twist about its spinnaret and weave the 

 tapestry of its chamber, supinators and pronators must be in 

 full play, as well as the ceaseless constrictor muscles, opening 

 and closing the spiracles, and giving such varied movements to 

 the segments of the abdomen. Would the dorsal vessel pulsate 

 without that arrangement of muscular fibre, by which the 

 systole and diastole is maintained ? and would the peristaltic 

 motion, so necessary to digestion, go on without that exquisite 

 network of innumerable muscular threads, which twine along, 

 and across, and around every internal organ ? No ; all this 

 mystery of life goes on planned, directed, and sustained beneath 

 the tegument of this microscopic worm. 



Now what is the little larva about ? I have placed it under 

 the microscope ; he has at length entered the leaf, and eaten 

 more than the length and breadth of its body. I turned it out 

 of its case at two p.m. It wandered restlessly until four p.m., 

 then fixed and opened its circular door, slowly going forward, 

 until on my return at ten p.m. it had advanced into perfect 

 shelter. The next morning a large blotch was eaten, but I was 

 in time to sit beside the elm branch and watch the making of 

 the tent. 



It had fixed near the edge of the leaf, and was carefully 

 eating out the parenchyma of each serrature, leaving the edges 

 untouched, as it thereby saved a seam in the tent, yet emptying 

 each tooth to make it light and less brittle. When all was 

 clear, the larva measured a gentle curve a little larger than its 

 body, and began to draw the cuticle together on the opposite 

 side to the serratures — tacking it loosely at first, and biting 

 the membrane between the fibres, sewing it more neatly then, 

 and careful not to cut the supporting braces formed by the 

 nerves of the leaf. Then it rubbed the interior of the case 

 with its head, as if to smooth it, and presently began to darken 

 it with a web of fine silk, rendering further operations invisible, 

 only I perceived that one end was left open for the ejection of 

 its excrement, and that the fibres were cut mysteriously away, 

 when the tent by powerful muscular action was raised from the 

 leaf, and the Coleophora marched off to refresh itself in a new 

 excavation. 



Yet that was another point on which to rest and ponder. 

 What was it eating, and how much did it eat ? 



What storo of delicate and varied food lies in the cells of 

 any leaf; sugar and starch and chlorophyll, oils and gums 

 and raphides; ay, and in some plants, like the common nettle, 

 beautiful crystals suspended from the cell wall, or floating 

 about j sweetmeats and candies for the little gourmand — no 



