The British naturalist

Robert MudieThe British Naturalist, Londres, Whittaker Treacher & Arnot, 1830, p. 154.

When those larvae fall into the water they would instantly be devoured by water beetles, by fish, and by the larvae of other insects, such as those of dragon-fly and the dytiscus beetles, were is not that they instantly build a house or case for themselves. These houses are formed of various substances, as grains of sand, small shells, bits of vegetable matter, cemented together by a glue which the larva produces. One species make choice of lemna or duck-meat, the little green plan which covers the surface of ponds and other stagnated waters in the summer. The leaves of the duck-meat are naturally round, and therefore not very well adapted for being united into a solid fabric without a great waste of materials, but the larva cuts them into perfect squares, and puts them together so neatly, that its house seems to be covered with a delicately chequered green riband wrapped spirally round it. This case connects them entirely, but they can at pleasure protrude the head  for the purpose of feeding, which they do indiscriminately upon vegetable and animal food.