The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting SpeciesFiguier, Louis
Science
The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting Species
Figuier, Louis
Insects
Another species uses its hairs in the composition of its cocoon; but
it adopts an entirely peculiar way of tearing them out, when the
tissue of its cocoon has become a species of network of pretty closely
packed rings. Réaumur one day saw one part of the cocoon bristling
with hairs. These were the hairs of a part of the back of the
caterpillar, which it had pushed through the rings of its cocoon. The
caterpillar then moved about as if rubbing this part of its back
successively in opposite directions against the interior surface of
the cocoon. In this way the hairs were very soon torn out and kept
retained in the rings of the cocoon. This cocoon is then bristly
inside, and does not at all suit the future chrysalis, which does not
like to be touched by any but smooth surfaces. The caterpillar then
works with its head, to lay the hairs along the interior surface, and
to keep them down by threads, which it draws over them. At another
time Réaumur saw a small hairy caterpillar, which appeared to live on
lichens, using its hair in another way. It tore them out to make its
cocoon, but it was not to lay them down and work them into a tissue.
It set them straight up like the stakes of palisades, on the
circumference of an oval space, in which it was placed. Shut up within
this palisade, it spun a light white web. This web supports the hairs,
causing the greater part of them to curve at their upper extremity,
in such a manner as to form a sort of cradle.
It remains for us now to speak of the caterpillars that make their
cocoons of silk, together with other materials. Réaumur saw the
Pimpernel caterpillar arranging and sticking together the leaves of
that plant, and spinning underneath them a thin cocoon of white silk
(Fig. 119).
Some caterpillars make their cocoons on the surface of the earth, and
even with earth. These cocoons are spherical or oblong. Their exterior
is more or less well shaped, but their interior is always smooth,
polished, shining like moistened earth, worked up together into a kind
of paste, and carefully smoothed out. This cocoon is besides lined
with a covering of silk of variable thickness. The shell is not made
of earth alone; threads of silk may be seen in it, crossing each
other, and binding together the particles of earth.
[Illustration: Fig. 120.--Larva of Cucullia verbasci.]
[Illustration: Fig. 121.--Cocoon of the Cucullia verbasci.]
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