Goo. MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 
as scarcely to shake an aspen leaf, and saw with wonder 
what he mistook for a little withered, pale, crumpled leaf, 
eaten as it were by caterpillars, fluttering from the tree. 
The sight appeared to him so very extraordinary, that he 
left his place of shelter to contemplate it more nearly ; and 
could scarcely believe his eyes, when he beheld a living in- 
sect, in shape and colour resembling a fragment of a 
withered leaf with the edges turned up and eaten away as 
it were by caterpillars, and at the same time all over beset 
with prickles?.—A British insect, one of our largest moths 
(Bombyx quercifolia, F.) called by collectors the /appet- 
moth, affords an example from the Lepidoptera order of the 
imitation in question, its wings representing, both in shape 
and colour, an arid brown leaf. Some bugs, belonging 
to the genus Tingis, F., simulate portions of leaves in a 
still further state of decay, when the veins only are left. 
For, the thorax and elytra of these insects being reticula- 
ted, with the little areas or meshes of the net-work trans- 
parent, this circumstance gives them exactly the appear- 
ance of small fragments of skeletons of leaves. 
But you have probably heard of most of these species 
of imitation: I hope, therefore, you will give credit to the 
two instances to which I shall next call your attention, of 
insects that even mimic flowers and fruit. With respect 
to the former, I recollect to have seen in a collection made 
by Mr. Masson at the Cape of Good Hope, a kind of 
Pneumora, Thunb.—arranged by Linné with the grass- 
hoppers (Gryllus)—the elytra of which were of a rose- or 
pink-colour, which shrowding its vesiculose abdomen, 
4 Voyage, &c. ii. 16. 
