NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



slightly trimmed off. The whole effect is that of a 

 highly artificial and man-made implement. 



It is suggestive of the unity of thought pervading 

 nature that a contrivance of Man the Manufacturer and 

 head of animate creation to capture water-food, and an 

 implement wrought for the same purpose by a caddis 

 larva which holds so low a grade in the scale of being, 

 should be wrought upon the same general plan and in 

 nearly the same form. And, further, that a spider, an- 

 other animal of low grade, should use to capture its 

 insect food a tool of much the same style; as man also 

 uses his nets for snaring birds and small land beasts. 



The hydropsychid larva not only holds its cairn as a 

 domicile, fishing-lodge, and fortress, but makes it the 

 scene of its pupation and transformation. It seals itself 

 within its silken case and awaits the great change, while 

 the brook ripples above it. Sometimes its case proves 

 to be its sarcophagus; but if it survive the ordeal, in 

 due time it awakens, and with the nature-given con- 

 sciousness that a new life in a new element awaits it, 

 cuts its way through the self -woven swathements, 

 mounts to the surface of the water, and, finding rest 

 upon some water-plant or projecting rock, casts its 

 pupal skin. 



The succeeding history has not yet been written but 

 is of reasonable inference. Perhaps it may break from 

 the pupal skin at the surface itself — a delicate and in- 

 stantaneous act which one would think needs the deftest 

 doing. For the water runs briskly, and the least un- 

 toward movement might lead to the wrecking of the 

 dainty craft, or the wetting of the expanding wings, 

 which would hinder escape from the turbulent element 

 it is forsaking. This instantaneous expansion of the 



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