356 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



It is, however, not a sombre insect, as the long footstalk of the 

 abdomen is bright yellow, and the limbs are banded with the 

 same lively hue. I strongly advise my readers to peruse this 

 account, because it is fuU of detail, and contains much useful 

 information about the method of working adopted by the insect, 

 thus giving a clue to the proceedings of other insects which 

 build habitations of similar materials. The length of the 

 account is the reason why it cannot be transferred to these pages, 

 and I must, therefore, give a short abstract. 



Having seen many patches of a yellow mud on the walls and 

 rafters, some as large as the closed fist and others of compara- 

 tively small dimensions, he asked some boys what they were, 

 and was told that they were the nests of the Dirt-daubers. 

 Finding that as the weather became waim the insects began to 

 build, he set to work and watched them carefully. First he 

 tried their sagacity by boring holes in their cells, in order to see 

 whether the insects would fill them up, and afterwards by insert- 

 ing foreign substances, such as a tin-tack and a piece of worsted, 

 into the cell. The insect proved herself equal to the occasion, 

 filled up the holes, and pulled out both the tack and the worsted. 

 The next point was, to watch a nest from its foundation, and to see 

 how it was built. The insect always went off, was absent for 

 about a minute, and then returned, bearing in her jaws a lump 

 of clay larger than her own head. The clay was perfectly 

 plastic, and could be spread at once. The method by which the 

 cell is formed must be given in the author's own words : — 



" About this time (August 18) the other species of Pelopaeus 

 began to be busy fabricating their artful thimble-shaped 

 nests. 



" It is difficult to convey by words an idea of their mode of 

 working. The commencement of a cell was by laying down the 

 load and working it into an oval ridge, one extremity of which 

 was to be the apex of the thimble cell. The next load was laid 

 on the ridge, but so as to be higher at the apex than at any other 

 part, and made slightly concave. When the top was made, the 

 work proceeded regularly by additions to the edges, which were 

 smoothly laid on, and always in the same slanting direction that 

 had been given at first, by raising one end of the incipient oval, 

 so that an unfinished cell in any state of progress appears to be 

 a cylinder cut off by a diagonal section. 



