CHAPTER VIII 

 MASONS 



Architectural ingenuity Mud houses Dauber wasps Catholic tastes 

 Warm corners Dauber's daintiness The builder at work Laying 

 in provisions Ingenious cruelty A spider bomb Working by rote 

 A fruitless task Building improvements Mason bees and rough- 

 castA natural cement Collecting materials Building stones Cake- 

 making Roofing in Restoring old buildings Cupolas The key- 

 stone Clusters of nests Plasterers Sheltered sites Keeping out 

 trespassers A stout wall Born in the midst of plenty Odynerus 

 A firm foundation Softening the ground Excavations A Lilli- 

 putian leaning tower Filigree walls An invader discouraged 

 Furnishing the larder A stack of bricks Bee hodmen Porches and 

 sentinels. 



IN some parts of the world where the materials which we 

 are in the habit of using to build our houses cannot be 

 obtained, the natives construct dwellings entirely of mud, 

 which soon becomes baked into a hard mass by the heat of 

 the sun. Many animUs do precisely the same thing ; some 

 of them make use of earth which is naturally moist, but in 

 that case they take care to choose sheltered spots for their 

 homes, which would very soon be destroyed and washed away 

 if they were exposed to rain ; others prefer dust as a build- 

 ing material, and by mixing it with their saliva transform it 

 into a stiff paste which adheres firmly together and becomes, 

 when dry, almost as hard as stone. Some put the final 

 touches to their work by plastering the inside or outside 

 walls of the nest with a kind of waterproof varnish, the 



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