378 



HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



is meant is not so apparent. One use, and perhaps the most 

 important, would seem to be to prevent the incursions of the 

 artful Ichneumons, ChrysidcB, &c., which are ever on the 

 watch to insinuate their parasitic young into the nests of other 

 insects : it may render their access to the nest more difficult ; 

 they may dread to enter into so long and dark a defile. I 

 have seen, however, more than once a Chrysis come out of 

 these tunnels. That its use is only temporary is plain from 

 the circumstance that the insect employs the whole fabric, 

 when its egg is laid and store of fruit procured, in filling up 

 the remaining vacuity of the hole ; taking down the pellets, 

 which are very conveniently at hand, and placing them in it 

 imtil the entrance is filled.^ — Latreille informs us that a 

 nearly similar tunnel, but composed of grains of earth, is built 

 at the entrance of its cell by a bee of his family of pioneers.^ 

 The habitations hitherto described are used simply as an 

 abode for the future larva springing from the egg deposited 

 in them by the parent female, and as a storehouse for its food ; 

 but in another class of insect habitations the house itself serves 

 both for the protection of the occupant and also for its subsis- 

 tence, the larva eating the inner portion of its very walls. 

 This is the case with the habitations constructed for their 

 future larvse by the beautiful weevils or long-snouted beetles 

 of the genera Rhynchites, Attelabus, 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 retains 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 R. Populi with those of the poplar, 

 of R, Betidce with those of the beech and birch, of Apoderus 



1 Reaum. vi. 251 — 257. t. xxvi. f. 1. 2 Latr. Fourmis, 419. 



3 Memoires de la Societe de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Geneve, viii. 

 2de partie, 1839, quoted by M. Goureau, Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, x. 21. 



