76 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



tallic-blue fly which rushes about the house at this season, 

 jerking its wings in a nervous way. Four times have I 

 found the keyhole of the box which is the habitation of 

 my Sunday hat securely stopped up with cement, and four 

 times have I been obliged to excavate my way into the 

 lock with a pin, and then to turn the hat-box upside down 

 (disarranging all the little articles in the sides) and drum 

 upon the bottom of it till I had shaken out a dozen or two 

 of spiders, arid also the white, blubberlike, limbless grub 

 for whose necessities the spiders were provided. It may be 

 objected that any other keyhole, or any hole at all of the 

 same size, would suit the said fly equally well, and I admit 

 that there is an old bunch of keys lying near the hat-box, 

 in which every one of suitable calibre has been stopped up. 

 There are also holes in the old book-shelf, into which it 

 was the original intention of the carpenter to have driven 

 nails, and they have all been engaged by these house- 

 hunters. Nevertheless, the objection is frivolous, for keys 

 and book-shelves are themselves comparatively modern 

 devices, and the great question remains, What did all the 

 community of wasps, bees, and ichneumon flies do before 

 we, or, to go further back still, before our Aryan brother 

 came into the country, and built houses and furnished them 



