HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



379 



Coryli with those of the hazle, and of Attelahus Curculionoides 

 with those of the oak, of which last, as more fully described by 

 M. Groureau, I will give you a short account. The female 

 having deposited a single egg, 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 fixing 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 towards her ; 

 and by a repetition of these manoeuvres, 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 cylindrical 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 conveniently arranged 

 the very singular habitations of the larvae of the Linnasan 



1 Ann. Soc. Ent, de France, x. 21 — 27. 



