49 
COLEOPHORA FUSCEDINELLA, 
The moth lays her ova on the underside of the leaves of birch, elm, 
etc. On hatching, the larva wanders about over the leaf, seeking a 
convenient place at which to bore into the interior. Having found 
this, it soon buries itself in the leaf and a few days later has eaten out 
a pear-shaped space. Here it undergoes its first ecdysis, and afterwards 
cuts out a tiny oval case from the mined space. It then walks off with 
its case and proceeds to fasten it onto another leaf. Here it cuts a 
minute round hole in the lower cuticle of the leaf, just large enough to 
admit its body. Then it eats out the parenchyma to a convenient 
distance around. It then loosens its case and departs to another spot, 
leaving behind the characteristic CHeophorid traces—a pale blotch with 
a small circular hole in the lower cuticle of a leaf. After making several 
such blotches the larva crawls off the leaves, fastens its case to a twig, 
and undergoes hybernation. In the spring it again attacks the leaves 
in a similar manner, and later makes an elongated blotch and cuts out 
a new case, quite of another pattern. The old case was more or less 
oval, but the new case is cylindrical. The larva still continues to make 
round holes and pale blotches in the leaves, though of much larger size 
than the previous ones. At length, fullfed, it fastens the case, usually 
on the upper side of an unmined leaf, and in a few weeks the dark 
brown moth emerges. 
The larvae of the genus Elachista, a genus containing over 40 species, 
are almost exclusively attached to grasses and sedges. They may be 
found in winter or early spring, and again as a second brood in July. 
Perhaps the most noteworthy point about this genus is the manner of 
pupation. In many species the pupa is fixed by the anal segment, 
and by a girth of silk round the body, very much after the manner of 
a Pierid pupa. The mines of this genus differ somewhat in shape and 
colour, according to the species, but that of the common Elachista 
megerlella may be taken as an example. ( Stt. Nat. Hist., vol. iii., also 
Douglas, Ent. Soc. Lon., New Series, vol. ii., p. 209, et seq.) 
Elachista megerella, Stt. 
The egg is laid on a blade of grass, and the young larva, mining 
upwards, leaves a very slender brown track, the frass collecting at the 
bottom of the mine. Before long, the larva comes out of the first 
mine and burrows into a fresh blade. Here it makes a much broader, 
whitish mine, which sometimes occupies the whole blade, When 
fullfed, the larva leaves the mine, and, finding a convenient situation, 
fastens itself by the tail, then passing a silken girth round its body, 
pupates. The pupa, thus attached, reminds one of a minute Pierid 
chrysalis. The dark-grey, white-b inded moths appear in about three 
weeks. (Stt. Nat. Ilist.. vol. ii ., p 74.) 
The family of the Gracilariidae are all leaf-miners, though some of 
them only mine in the earlier larval stages. Gracilaria stigmatella, 
when quite young, mines in the leaves of willows and poplar, and 
afterwards leaves the mine and lives in a cone, which it makes by 
rolling up a portion of the leaf like a grocers apprentice twists a 
piece of paper to carry a pound of sugar, as Stainton suggests in the 
Entomologist's Companion, p. 60. After the larva has eaten the inner 
portion of the cone it leaves it to form a fresh one. To form its 
silken cocoon it turns up a piece of the leaf-edge. 
