248 
THE STUDY OF INSECTS. 
granella , Adela ridingsella , Bucculatrixpomonella , and many 
hundreds of others; until the syllable -ella always brings 
before us a vision of a tiny moth, with narrow wings bear¬ 
ing long delicate fringes. 
The Tineids are very numerous, there being nearly one 
thousand described American species; and doubtless there 
are many undescribed as yet. The superfamily is composed 
of several families; but, as the study of these insects is 
too difficult to be carried far by the beginning student, we 
will not take the space to define these families in this work. 
We will merely describe the habits of a few species. 
At first thought the leaves of our common shrubs and 
trees seem quite as thin as if they had been cut out of 
sheets of paper. But the reader has doubtless learned in 
the study of Botany that the upper and the lower surfaces 
of a leaf are each covered with a thin skin or epidermis, and 
that between these two skins there is a fleshy portion called 
the parenchyma. But if botanists had failed to teach us 
this lesson, the Tineid larvae would have done so; for many 
of these little creatures live until full grown between the two 
skins of a leaf, and derive their nourishment from the paren¬ 
chyma. As our coal-miners dig tunnels in the earth, so do 
these larvae eat out long passages in the substance of a leaf, 
without breaking through either epidermis. 
During 1 the late summer and autumn there can be found 
on almost any shrub or tree leaves that are more or less dis-* 
colored by white or grayish blotches or by long twisted 
lines that reveal the abiding-places of leaf-miners. Surely 
Mr. Lowell must have had these in mind when he wrote; 
“ And there’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean 
To be some happy creature’s palace.” 
Not only are very many kinds of plants infested by 
Tineid larvae, but the mines in the leaves differ greatly in 
form and in their position in the leaf. These differences in 
food-plant and in the shape and ^position of the mines do 
