sion
which preserves the symmetrical arrangement of the ornamental ridges;
lastly, it increases the capacity by a gradual transfer of the
material from the inside to the outside. This method of renewing the
old coat is so accurate that nothing is thrown aside, nothing treated
as useless, not even the baby-wear, which remains encrusted in the
keystone at the original top of the structure.

If fresh materials were not added, obviously the jar would gain in
size at the cost of thickness. The shell would become too thin, by
dint of being turned in order to make space, and would sooner or later
lack the requisite solidity. The grub guards against that. It has in
front of it as much earth as it can wish for; it keeps putty in a
back-shop; and the factory which produces it never slacks work. There
is nothing to prevent it from thickening the structure at will and
adding as much material as it thinks proper to the inner scrapings
from the shell.

Invariably clad in a garment that is an exact fit, neither too loose
nor too tight, the grub, when the cold weather comes, closes the mouth
of its earthenware jar with a lid of the same mixed compound, a paste
of earth and stercoral cement. It then turns round and makes its
preparations for the metamorphosis, with its head at the back of the
pot and its stern near the entrance, which will not be opened again.
It reaches the adult stage in April and May, when the ilex becomes
covered with tender shoots, and emerges from its shell by breaking
open the hinder end. Now come the days of revelry on the leafage, in
the mild morning sun.

The Clythra's jar is a piece of work entailing no little delicacy of
execution. I can quite well see how the grub lengthens and enlarges
it; but I cannot imagine how it begins it. If it has nothing to serve
as a mould and a base, how does it set to work to assemble the first
layers of paste into a neatly-shaped cup?

Our potters have their lathe, the tray which keeps the work rotating
and implements to determine its outline. Could the Clythra, an
exceptional ceramic artist, work without a base and without a guide?
It strikes me as an insurmountable difficulty. I know the insect to be
capable of many remarkable industrial feats; but, before admitting
that the jar can be based on nothing, we should have to see the
new-born artist at work. Perhaps it has resources bequeathed to it by
its mother; perhaps the egg presents peculiarities which will solve
the r