HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 253 
the house itself serves both for the protection of the occupant and also for 
its subsistence, the larva eating the inner portion of its very walls. 
This is the case with the habitations constructed for their future larvae 
by the beautiful weevils or long-snouted beetles of the genera Rhynchites, 
Altelabus, and Apoderus, which consist of the whole, or more commonly a 
part, of a leaf of the tree on which they are to feed, rolled up with great 
art by the mother into a sort of cylinder sometimes resembling a little 
horn, and at others a wallet more or less elongated, thus giving a singular 
appearance to the leaves so treated, which, while their basal portion re- 
tains its usual form, have their extremities metamorphosed into these odd- 
looking appendages. A very interesting description of the mode in which 
these nests are constructed has been lately given by M. Huber of Geneva", 
who has detailed the procedures of Rhynchites Bacchus with the leaves 
of the vine, of . Populi with those of the poplar, of R. Betule with 
those of the beech and birch, of Apoderus Coryli with those of the 
hazel, and of Altelabus Curculionoides with those of the oak, of which last, 
as more fully described by M. Goureau, I will give you a short account. 
The female having deposited a single egz, which adheres by its natural 
gluten, near the mid-rib of the end of the upper side of the leaf she has 
selected, passes to the under surface, and slightly but repeatedly gnaws 
with her small jaws both the mid-rib and epidermis in every part until 
both are rendered perfectly pliable. If the leaf be a small one, she treats 
the whole of it in this way and rolls up the whole ; if a large one, she thus 
prepares only about one-third or one-half of it, and cuts it across, all except 
the mid-rib, with her jaws at the proper point, so as to leave a sufficient 
extent of pliable leaf for her operations. Her next business is to roll up 
this terminal portion of the leaf, in effecting which she thus proceeds. 
First she folds it together longitudinally so as to cover her egg, the mid- 
rib forming one edge of the folded part, and its marginal serratures the 
other. Next she places herself at a right angle with the mid-rib, towards 
which her tail is directed while her head points to the serratures ; and fix- 
ing the claws of her two hind left legs into the leaf, she employs those of 
the two hind right legs to pull the point of it toward her ; and by a repe- 
tition of these manceuvres, not easily described, she at last succeeds in 
rolling the whole into a little cylinder having at one end the mid-rib whose 
spirals there resemble those of the main-spring of a watch, and at the 
other, which is of a less regular shape, the serratures of the leaf, so pushed 
in by means of her trunk and fore-legs as to retain the whole in its cylin- 
drical form. The larva proceeding from the egg thus deposited towards 
the end of May is hatched early in June, and never quits the habitation 
which its provident and truly laborious mother (for each egg requires its 
separate leaf and the long process above described) has prepared for it, 
eating in succession the different rolls of its cylinder, till it has attained its 
full growth? 
Under this head, too, may be most conyeniently arranged the very sin- 
gular habitations of the larve of the Linnean genus Cynips, the gall-fly, 
though they can with no propriety be said to be constructed by the mother, 
who, provided with an instrument as potent as an enchanter’s wand, has 
1 Mémoires de la Société de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Genéve, viii, 2me 
partie, 1839, quoted by M. Goureau, dnn. Soc, Ent. de France, x. 21, 
2 Ann, Soc. Ent. de France, x. 21 — 27. 
