VESPIAN MASONRY. 311 



the uses of a sharp double pickaxe and a pair of forceps, she 

 is employed, seemingly, in the work of excavation. To do 

 her justice, we cannot but admit that she never leaves off 



" To play, or to idle, or chat." 



Yet for all her assiduity her progress is but slow, for as, piece 

 by piece, each about the size of a mustard-seed, she scoops 

 into her hard material, she carries off each particle to some 

 distance from the scene of operation. 



Her patience does not seem to tire, but ours in truth does, 

 or would, if we watched her to the termination of her task, 

 at the end, perhaps, of some days hence. We must leave 

 her, therefore, to complete it, and that with the less regret 

 because we happen to have learnt from other more indefati- 

 gable observers that, her excavation finished, she will proceed 

 to plaster it with a coating of clay, and then close up its 

 entrance with a layer, twice the thickness, of the same material. 



We may take a look now at the more rapid proceedings of 

 another independent labourer, also a female, and in appearance 

 amd attire not unlike the last. Like her, she also is an exca- 

 vator, but she is something more, more of an erector. She 

 is employed (her tools nearly similar) not upon a brick, but 

 upon a block of hard sandstone, which she however moistens, 

 as she works, with a convenient salivary fluid. Each few grains 

 of sand that she thus detaches we see her kneading into a little 

 pellet, and with the like moulded masses (her unbaked bricks) 

 she has built already a circular wall or rampart round the 



