from ἄλλος, a Greek term used in the composition of many words to denote false or spurious: as the pseudo-acacia, or bastard acacia; pseudo-fumaria, or bastard-fumitory; pseudo-ruta, or bastard-rue, &c.

We also say, a pseudo-apostle or false apostle; a pseudo-prophet, or false prophet, &c.

Pseudo-China. See Smilax.

Pseudo-Galena, or Black-Jack. See Zinc, Ores of, Mineralogy Index.

Pseudo-Tinea, in Natural History, the name of a very remarkable species of insect described by M Reaumur, approaching to the nature of the tinea, or clothes moth, while in the worm-state, but not making themselves coats of the substance of leaves, cloth, &c., though they form a sort of cases for their defence against a very terrible enemy.

These creatures are of the caterpillar kind, and have, in the manner of many of these insects, 16 legs. They feed on wax, and for food enter the bee-hives; where they boldly engage the bees, and are not to be prevented by them from feeding, though at the expense of their habitations and the cells of their reservoirs of honey: so that it is no uncommon thing for a swarm of bees to be forced to change their place of habitation, and make new combs elsewhere; leaving the old ones to this contemptible victor, whom they know not how to drive out or possess.

Virgil and Aristotle, and all the authors who have written on bees, have complained of this destructive animal. It never eats the honey, but feeds only on the wax; attacking principally those waxy cells where the female bee deposits her eggs for the future progeny.

The bees, who are a match for most other creatures by means of their stings, would easily destroy these weak creatures, were it not for the impervious armour they are covered with. They form themselves a coat of armour of a double matter. The first, which immediately covers the body, is of a kind of silk of their own spinning; and the outer covering over this is of the bees-wax: this is laid considerably thick; and the creature, just thrusting out its head to feed, goes on devouring the cells undisturbed, while a whole army of the inhabitants are in vain buzzing about him, and attempting to pierce him with their stings. He never forsakes his covering, but lengthens and enlarges it as he goes; and gnawing down the sides of the cells in his march, without staying to eat them one by one, the havoc and destruction he occasions are scarcely to be conceived. When the time of the change of this creature approaches, it contracts its body within its double covering, and there changes into the nymph state; whence, after a proper time, it comes forth in form of a moth, with granulated horns and a crooked proboscis.

The bees have cunning enough to know their destructive enemy in this new form; and as this is a weak and defenceless state, they attack and destroy all the moths of this species they meet with. They seldom are so fortunate, however, as to kill the whole race as soon as produced; and if only one escapes, it is able to lay a foundation of revenge for the death of its brethren. All the flies of the moth kind lay a vast number of eggs, and this is behind hand with none of them in that particular: the young ones produced from the eggs of one surviving female of this species are sufficient to destroy many honey-combs; nay, many hives of them. The moth produced by this caterpillar flies but little; yet it is very nimble in avoiding danger, by running, which it does with great swiftness.

There is a species of these pseudo-tineae, or wax-eating caterpillars, which infest the subterraneous hives of wasps and other creatures which make wax: the manner of living, feeding, and defending themselves from their enemies, is the same in all the species. These last, if they are at any time distressed for food, will eat their own dung; the wax having passed almost unaltered through their bodies, and being still wax, and capable of affording them more nourishment on a second digestion. These species, though they naturally live on this soft food, yet if by any accident they meet with harder only, they know how to live upon it; and can eat a way into the covers and leaves of books, and make themselves cases and coverings of the fragments of these substances.

The accurate author† of these observations describes also a kind of pseudo-tinea which feeds on wool, and another that eats leather; both making themselves houses also of the materials they feed on.

There is also another kind very destructive to corn: these make themselves a covering by fastening together a great number of the grains, and there living and eating in secret. All these creatures, whatever be their food or habitation, finally become phalenae, or moths; and may be distinguished, even in this state, from the other species, by having granulated horns of a remarkable structure, and all of them a proboscis, or trunk, more or less incurvated.