NATURE STUDY. 
PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 
Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences. 
You. II. April, 1902. No. 11. 
Some Queer Sticks. II. 
BY EDWARD J. BURNHAM. 
The first thing the tiny Caddis-fly larva must do, after 
getting out of the egg shell, is to set about building a house. 
Most other insects have a hard covering over the entire 
body, but the ancestors of the caddis-flies have lived in 
houses so long that this covering has nearly disappeared. 
The head is still covered with it, and generally the three 
joints or segments next to the head also. These are the 
joints that have the three pairs of legs attached, and to¬ 
gether are called the thorax. Sometimes one or two joints 
of the thorax are naked, as well as the remainder of the 
body, and as caddis-flies of the same kind always have the 
same number of segments covered or naked, boys and girls 
when they learn this, find it real fun to gather the different 
kinds and assort them, just as a grown-up entomologist 
would do. 
But whether he has a hard, reddish jacket of one, two, 
or three segments, so much of his body is still naked that 
the little insect must build a house at once. If his father 
and mother lived in stone houses, he begins with the tini¬ 
est bits of gravel he can find and, before he is two days 
