392 



HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



uniform close texture, is formed into numerous transparent 

 scales overwrapping each other, and altogether very much 

 resembling the scales of a fish.^ These mantle-covered cases, 

 one of which I once had the pleasure of discovering, are 

 inhabited by the larva of a little moth apparently first de- 

 scribed by Dr. Zincken genannt Sommer, who calls it Tinea 

 ■palliatella^^ 



Various substances besides silk are fabricated into habita- 

 tions by other larvas, though usually joined together either 

 with silk or an analogous gummy material. Thus Diurnea ? 

 lichenum forms of pieces of lichen a dwelling resembling one 

 of the turreted Helices, many of which I observed in June, 

 1812, on an oak in Barham. The larva of another moth, 

 which also feeds upon lichens, instead of employing these 

 vegetables in forming its habitation, composes it of grains of 

 stone eroded from the walls of buildings upon which its food 

 is found, and connected by a silken cement. These insects 

 were the subject of a paper in the Memoirs of the French 

 Academy^, by M. de la Yoye, who, from the circumstance 

 of their being found in great abundance on mouldering walls, 

 attributed to them the power of eating stone, and regarded 

 them as the authors of injuries proceeding solely from the 

 hand of time ; for the insects themselves are so minute, and 

 the coating of grains of stone composing their cases is so 

 trifling, that Reaumur observes they could scarcely make any 

 perceptible impression on a wall from which they had pro- 

 cured materials for ages.* Another lepidopterous larva, but 

 of a much larger size and different genus, the case of which 

 is preserved in the cabinet of the late President of the Lin- 

 nean Society, who pointed it out to me, employs the spines 

 apparently of some species of Mimosa, which are ranged side 

 by side, so as to form a very elegant fluted cylinder. A 

 similar arrangement of pieces of small twigs is observable in 

 the habitation of the females ^ of the larvae of a moth referred 



1 Reaum. iii. 206. ^ Germar's Mag. far Entomologie, i. 40. 



3 X. 458. 4 Reaum. iii. 1 83. 



The larvas of the males intermix with the pieces of twigs, which are less 

 closely and regularly arranged, bits of dried leaves and other light materials. See 

 the excellent elucidation of the history of this tribe, whose mode of generation is so 

 singular, by Von Scheven, in the Naturforschcr, Stk. xx. 61., &c.; also a valuable 

 paper by Dr. Zincken genannt Sommer, in Germar's Mag. fur Ent. i. 19 — 40 



