ce. Nor is there
anything to tell us that the soft coverlet is not at the same time a
shelter which screens a too sensitive skin from the sun. And, if it
were a mere fal-lal, a furbelow of larval coquetry, even that would
not surprise me. The insect has tastes which we cannot judge by our
own. Let us end with a doubt and proceed.

May is not over when the grub, now fully-grown, leaves the lily and
buries itself at the foot of the plant, at no great depth. Working
with its head and rump, it forces back the earth and makes itself a
round recess, the size of a pea. To turn the cell into a hollow pill
which will not be liable to collapse, all that remains for it to do is
to drench the wall with a glue which soon sets and grips the sand.

To observe this work of consolidation, I unearth some unfinished cells
and make an opening which enables me to watch the grub at work. The
hermit is at the window in a moment. A stream of froth pours from his
mouth like beaten-up white of egg. He slavers, spits profusely; he
makes his product effervescence and lays it on the edge of the breach.
With a few spurts of froth the opening is plugged.

I collect other grubs at the moment of their interment and install
them in glass tubes with a few tiny bits of paper which will serve
them as a prop. There is no sand, no building-material other than the
creature's spittle and my very few shreds of paper. Under these
conditions can the pill-shaped cell be constructed?

Yes, it can; and without much difficulty. Supporting itself partly on
the glass, partly on the paper, the larva begins to slaver all around
it, to froth copiously. After a spell of some hours, it has
disappeared within a solid shell. This is white as snow and highly
porous; it might almost be a globule of whipped albumen. Thus, to
stick together the sand in its pill-shaped nest, the larva employs a
frothy albuminous substance.

Let us now dissect the builder. Around the oesophagus, which is fairly
long and soft, are no salivary glands, no silk-tubes. The frothy
cement is therefore neither silk nor saliva. One organ forces itself
upon our attention: it is the crop, which is very capacious, and
dilated with irregular protuberances that put it out of shape. It is
filled with a colourless, viscous fluid. This is certainly the raw
material of the frothy spittle, the glue that binds the grains of sand
together and consolidates them into a spherical whole.

When the preparations for t