The Mason-Wasps 



brood of grubs before chimneys were 

 thought of? When, on the hills near by, 

 abounding in traces of their sojourn, the 

 aborigines of Serignan were hewing weapons 

 out of flint, scraping Goat-skins into raiment 

 and building huts of mud and branches, did 

 the Pelopaeus already frequent their cabins? 

 Did she build in some bulging pot, shaped 

 with the thumb out of half-baked black clay, 

 and by this choice teach her latter-day de- 

 scendants to seek out the peasant's gourd on 

 the chimneypiece ? Did she think of build- 

 ing in the folds of the garments, the spoils 

 of the Wolf and the Bear, hanging from 

 some set of antlers, the hat-rack of the 

 period, thus trying her hand at a kind of 

 annexation that was to take her at a later 

 date to window-curtains and the labourer's 

 smock? Did she prefer to fix her nest on 

 the rough wall of branches and clay, near 

 the conical orifice which let out the smoke 

 from the primitive fire laid between four 

 stones in the centre of the hut? Though 

 not equal to our present chimneys, it will 

 have served at a pinch. 



What progress she has made, this 

 Pelopaeus, what a contrast between that mis- 

 erable beginning and her modern premises, 

 if she is really, in my district, a con- 



