It does not need to, for now it is a dainty little nun, with a long, tan-colored cloak. Its cloak, of course, is its wings folded down about its body. Like the fairy May flies it has no mouth and eats nothing in the adult form.
It looks like a dainty brown moth as it flutters about the bushes and goes flying up and down the brook.
You will always find these little brown-cloaked figures flitting about the brooks, where the caddice larvæ live.
You see the caddice undergoes a complete metamorphosis.
No, it does not belong to the Neuroptera.
Examine its wings very carefully. Look at them through the magnifying glass, and you will see they are clothed with hairs.
So these are the hair wings.
The name of the order to which they belong is Trichoptera, from pteron, a wing, and thrix, a hair.
Sometime you must take a caddice larva from its house and put it in a saucer of water with fine bits of mica, which you know is another name for the isinglass that makes the little windows in our stoves.