230 STATES OF INSECTS. 



manoeuvres, and make its vault of one uniform texture. 

 It spun across the opening a little net of silk, between the 

 meshes of which it thrust grains of earth so dexterously 

 that they projected as far as the outer surface, retained 

 there probably by silken lines previously attached and 

 fastened within. It then finished its habitation by forti- 

 fying the inside of the orifice with another layer of earth a . 

 The ant-lion [Myrmeleoii) spins a globular cocoon with 

 its anus, which it covers with grains of sand b . One that I 

 took in the forest of Fontainebleau, in the quarry that pro- 

 duces the crystallized sandstone called the Fontainebleau 

 fossil, was covered with large and shining grains. Instead 

 of the grains of earth or sand employed by these larvae, 

 those of another tribe substitute grains of stone detached 

 from the softer walls, upon whose lichens they previously 

 feed, which they unite into solid oval cocoons c . Those 

 of a fourth form their cocoons of patches of short moss 

 arranged with the roots downwards, and forming a vault, 

 as it were, of verdant turf, admirably adapted for con- 

 cealment d . The larvae of some moths form their cocoons 

 of irregular pieces of bark tied together with silk, and 

 resembling when completed a knotty protuberance of the 

 twig on which they are fixed. That of Pyralis tubercu- 

 lana constructs a pannier-shaped one of the parenchyma 

 of the leaves of plants e . 



All these cocoons, however, must yield in point of 

 singularity of construction, materials, and ingenuity, to 

 one formed by a small caterpillar, described by the illus- 

 trious naturalist lately quoted, which feeds upon the oak. 

 This cocoon is wholly composed of small rectangular 



» Reaum. i. 579. h Ibid. vi. 368. * Ibid. i. 542. 



d Ibid. 543. E Linn. Trans, i. 196. 



