Sanborn A. & Abby A. Tenney, Natural History of Animals containing Brief Descriptions of the Animals Figured on Tenney’s Natural History Tablets, but Complete Without The Tablets, New York,  Charles Scribner, 1865, p. 179.

On account of their curious appearance and habits, these insects are the most interesting while in the larva state. They live at the bottom of ponds and streams, in cases which they construct of bits of wood, or grasses, or of grains of sand, or of fragments of broken shells, and which are loned with silk, which they spin fron their mouths. They sometimes load one side of the case with heavier pieces, in order to keep that side downward.