30 
XYLORYCTS OR TIMBER MOTHS. 
support of this latter opinion we have the fact that the aboriginals in 
former days sought out these larvie, cut them out of their holes, and 
ate them on the spot, as we would an oyster. These caterpillars 
are all nocturnal in their habits, and, as far as my researches show, 
only leave their chamber in the stem during nighttime, when they 
hurriedly bite off a leaf and retire bearing it off with them. It is a 
curious sight to watch them dragging off' the leaf and entering the 
hole backwards (which they do with considerable celerity if at all 
disturbed), raising at the same time the covering which conceals 
the entrance to their burrow with their hinder extremity, and 
pulling the leaf after them. The leaf is now secured with a few 
silken threads, and the insect feeds on it at its leisure without 
fear of being snapped up by some outside enemy. Some of the 
species, however, do not appear to feed on the leaves, but devout 
the soft bark round the entrances to their burrows, spinning the 
web-coyenng for some distance, and indeed extending it as they 
exhaust the food supply in the immediate neighbourhood of the 
hole. There IS one species at present known which makes ue 
burrow or tunnel, but simply spins its covering on the tree stem 
and feeds ou the soft bark underneath, and when changing to 
the pupa state forms a cocoon of silk and bits of bark and exL 
mentitious matter mixed. (Itbaro o ■ ■ , “ ® 
galleries amongst the leaves and twmg whhst San 
the cones and seed-heads of plant an 1 
states that T. laetiorella resid6s\-, hir. i\%nck 
it spins a cocoon. I have reared r, ^ l^ark-feeder and that 
them as stated by him, though it i 
ment is correct, for I know Xvlnr '^^likely that his state- 
to reside in a tunnel in stems ^’^teotactella occasionally 
usually spinning galleries amongst twltl 
formmg a cocoon. The laro-ev ^ leaves, and finally 
larger and more characteristic species 
As the larvi® 
of the family are all, however tunnel u 
grow bigger they extend the tunZl 
form the chief impediment to J seems to 
as the wood dries up when cut a young state* 
their mandibles, hence they eithe”^,!— becomes too hard foi 
ave several times succeeded in Iminel or leave it' 
chamber along the interior angle of 
® ® tbe box in which they hav'O 
