A protection against the fishes

Kay E. Robinson, « The Week’s Wild Life in Pictures », Londres, The Country-Side. A Journal of the Country, Garden, Nature, and Wild Life, n° 172, vol. VII, 29 août, 1908, p. 180-181.

The caddis-flies are well know as bait for anglers – long brown-winged flies that fold their patterned wings like moths and carry a pair of waving, thread-like feelers. The caddisworm, or grub of the caddis-fly, is good bait also, but must first be dragged out of the case which it builds round itself as a protection against the fishes; for the caddis-fly is one of the insects whose grubs live in the water.

Some caddis-worms make their cases of sand and small stones, others of bits of leaves, or of stalks, or of twigs. Of one kind-called Limnophilus flavicornis- the grub make their tubes of pond-shells, not caring, apparently, what kind of shell they use, nor whether the shells are inhabited or not.