Page:The Book of the Aquarium and Water Cabinet.djvu/139

Rh weed, pebbles, minute shells, even if the snails within them are alive, and any small debris that their fingers can seize hold of. Last season I had amongst a large number of cads, one that had his case nearly destroyed by accidentally falling from the table. I removed from him what remained of his case, and threw him into a jar with a soldier plant and a few Lymnea. He set to work to repair his tabernacle, and the Lymnea helped him, for they nibbled a plant of Stratoides into shreds. These shreds the cad gathered, and every day he added a fresh piece, so that, in about ten days, he appeared in a suit of green, his clothes bulged out to an enormous size, and everywhere studded with points and corners, the most comical sight that could be imagined. Since he could find nothing of a small neat pattern, he took what he could, and became a perfect Jack in the green, nearly an inch and a half in length, and thicker than a carpenter’s lead pencil.

The movements of these creatures are as comical as their specimens of tailoring. We see them mounting a stem or leaf with great gravity, when suddenly up goes the tail, the legs hold tight, and the case turns completely over, as if on the first of May, Jack-in-the-green were to dance on his head. When the creature is hidden, and the case sways to and fro like a buoy attached by too short a rope, the sight is very curious. This case-maker is the larva from a fly which bears resemblances to the two families which stand on either side of it—the Lepidoptera, or true butterflies, and the Neuroptera, of which the dragon flies and other membranaceous winged insects are