these objects, such as the petioles just named, feathers, &c., are
never gnawed by worms. In a gravel-walk in my garden I found many
hundred leaves of a pine-tree (P. austriaca or nigricans) drawn by
their bases into burrows. The surfaces by which these leaves are
articulated to the branches are shaped in as peculiar a manner as
is the joint between the leg-bones of a quadruped; and if these
surfaces had been in the least gnawed, the fact would have been
immediately visible, but there was no trace of gnawing. Of
ordinary dicotyledonous leaves, all those which are dragged into
burrows are not gnawed. I have seen as many as nine leaves of the
lime-tree drawn into the same burrow, and not nearly all of them
had been gnawed; but such leaves may serve as a store for future
consumption. Where fallen leaves are abundant, many more are
sometimes collected over the mouth of a burrow than can be used, so
that a small pile of unused leaves is left like a roof over those
which have been partly dragged in.

A leaf in being dragged a little way into a cylindrical burrow is
necessarily much folded or crumpled. When another leaf is drawn
in, this is done exteriorly to the first one, and so on with the
succeeding leaves; and finally all become closely folded and
pressed together. Sometimes the worm enlarges the mouth of its
burrow, or makes a fresh one close by, so as to draw in a still
larger number of leaves. They often or generally fill up the
interstices between the drawn-in leaves with moist viscid earth
ejected from their bodies; and thus the mouths of the burrows are
securely plugged. Hundreds of such plugged burrows may be seen in
many places, especially during the autumnal and early winter
months. But, as will hereafter be shown, leaves are dragged into
the burrows not only for plugging them up and for food, but for the