HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 4?55 



and the wood work of old houses ; and many larvae of 

 other orders, 'particularly Lepidoptera. One of these 

 last, the larva of Bombyx Cossus, differs from its conge- 

 ners in fabricating for its residence during winter a ha- 

 bitation of pieces of wood lined with fine silk a . Under 

 this division, too, come the singular habitations of the 

 subcutaneous larvae, so called from the circumstance of 

 their feeding upon the parenchyma included between the 

 upper and under cuticles of the leaves of plants, between 

 which, though the whole leaf is often not thicker than a 

 sheet of writing-paper, they find at once food and lodg- 

 ing. You must have been at some time struck by certain 

 white zigzag or labyrinth-like lines on the leaves of the 

 dandelion, bramble, and numerous other plants: the 

 next time you meet with one of them, if you hold it up 

 to the light you will perceive that the colour of these 

 lines is owing to the pulpy substance of the leaf having 

 there been removed ; and at the further end you will 

 probably remark a dark-coloured speck, which, when 

 carefully extricated from its covering, you will find to be 

 the little miner of the tortuous galleries which you are 

 admiring. Some of these minute larvae, to which the 

 parenchyma of a leaf is a vast country, requiring several 

 weeks to be traversed by the slow process of mining which 

 they adopt — that of eating the excavated materials as 

 they proceed — are transformed into beetles {Curculio 

 Thapsus, &c.) ; others into flies ; and a still greater 

 number into very minute moths of the genus Ti?iea, as 

 T. Wilkella, T. Clerkella, &c. Many of these last are 

 little miracles of nature, which has lavished on them the 

 a Lyonet, Anat. of Coss. 9. 



