The mother insect takes care to deposit her eggs on or near such substances as she instinctively foreknows will be best adapted for the food of the young, taking care to distribute them so that there may be a plentiful supply and enough of room for each. We have found, for example, some of those caterpillars feeding upon the shreds of cloth used in training wall-fruit trees; but we never saw more than two caterpillars on one shred. This scattering of the eggs in many places renders the effects of the caterpillars more injurious, from their attacking many parts of a garment or a piece of stuff at the same time. (J. R.) When one of the caterpillars of this family issues from the egg, its first care is to provide itself with a domicile, which indeed seems no less indispensable to it than food; for, like all caterpillars that feed under cover, it will not eat while it remains unprotected. Its mode of building is very similar to that which is employed by other caterpillars that make use of extraneous materials. The foundation or framework is made of silk secreted by itself, and into this it interweaves portions of the material upon which it feeds. It is said by Bingley, that "after having spun a fine coating of silk _immediately around its body_, it cuts the filaments of the wool or fur close by the thread of the cloth, or by the skin, with its teeth, which act in the manner of scissors, into convenient lengths, and applies the bits, one by one, with great dexterity, to the _outside_ of its silken case."[BT] This statement, however, is erroneous, and inconsistent with the proceedings not only of the clothes-moth, but of every caterpillar that constructs a covering. None of these build from within outwards, but uniformly commence with the exterior wall, and finish by lining the interior with the finest materials. Réaumur, however, found that the newly-hatched caterpillars lived at first in a case of silk.