The Caddis- Worm 



Its sheath, a travelling house, is a com- 

 posite and barbaric piece of work, a megalithic 

 pile wherein art retires in favour of amor- 

 phous strength. The materials are many and 

 sundry, so much so that we might imagine that 

 we had the work of dissimilar builders before 

 our eyes, if frequent transitions did not tell us 

 the contrary. 



With the young ones, the novices, it starts 

 with a sort of deep basket in rustic wicker- 

 work. The twigs employed present nearly 

 always the same characteristics and are none 

 other than bits of small, stiff roots, long 

 steeped and peeled under water. The grub 

 that has made a find of these fibres saws them 

 with its mandibles aud cuts them into little 

 straight sticks, which it fixes one by one to the 

 edge of its basket, always crosswise, perpen- 

 dicular to the axis of the work. 



Picture a circle surrounded by a bristling 

 mass of tangents, or rather a polygon with 

 its sides extended in all directions. On this 

 assemblage of straight lines we place repeated 

 layers of others, without troubling about 

 similarity of position, thus obtaining a sort of 

 ragged fascine, whose sticks project on every 

 side. Such is the bastion of the child-grub, an 

 excellent system of defence, with its continu- 



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