J. BABCOCK-OUT MELICERTA BINGEN'S. 
35 
is finally carried into the pellet-organ. In this way variously- 
coloured bricks are built up into the dwelling-house of the Meli- 
certan, which make it quite an ornamental structure. There is a 
good deal of ingenuity required in the making of these bricks, and 
in depositing them in regular rows. There is a right and wrong 
way of doing this, and not every Melicertan is an adept in the 
operation, as every observer who has made himself familiar with 
them must have seen. We get some very badly-built houses as 
well as some most exquisitely-constructed ones. The bricks them¬ 
selves must be properly constructed in order to make a perfectly 
symmetrical building. In shape they should be something like 
“ minie ” rifle bullets, tapering at one extremity, and this is accom¬ 
plished in this way. When the building-material gets into the 
pug-mill, it is whirled round and round into a spherical form, and 
grows larger and denser by the addition of ever-increasing particles, 
which, being mixed with a secretion from the animal itself, in 
two or three minutes attain a certain consistency ready for moulding 
into the required form. This is accomplished by the rolling ball 
being pushed forward into the mouth of the mill and there being 
thinned out at one end, on which it receives no more additional 
matter. The other part meanwhile gradually gets larger, until it 
attains the required size for its place in the building. It is not 
always, however, that circumstances allow of the pellet being made 
in this way. Sometimes it lies right across the cup, that is to say, 
it has up to a certain point been made the wrong way, rolled, as 
you would roll a piece of clay in your hands, but out of the proper 
line. How is it to be altered in order that the proper form may 
be obtained and its exit secured ? This is done by the MeUcerta 
stopping the supply of material on one side and then setting up a 
uniform revolving motion round a horizontal axis, perpendicularly 
to its ordinary method. Thus the brick is got over to the side 
where the supply of material is stopped, and is increased in size 
only on that side where the building-material is coming in, and so 
the required figure is arrived at. 
In the process of building, the bulging outline of the pellet must 
always be on the outside of the case, and the creature lays hold 
of it by means of what some observers have called its nose and 
chin, and pinches it up and carries it away to its right place in an 
instant. This is done so quickly that you cannot follow the move¬ 
ment, and the animal is back and again at work on another brick 
before you have recovered your breath, which one may imagine 
had been for the moment suspended in astonishment. 
Let us turn now from the nose and chin, and the pug-mill, to the 
main current conveying the assorted nutriment onwards to the 
mastax. Before, however, it is allowed to enter there, it has to 
pass another sorting or tasting process, and if anything has escaped 
the first ordeal that is unsuited for food, it is here arrested and 
thrust upwards and out with the waste. Thus the finest selection 
is made for that which is to nourish one of the finest and most 
complicated and most delicate organisms that nature has produced. 
