e nest of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds from its tile--a
nest sometimes quite eight inches thick--we find live inhabitants
only in a thin outer layer. All the remainder, the catacombs of past
generations, is but a horrible heap of dead, shrivelled, ruined,
decomposed things. Into this sub-stratum of the ancient city the
unreleased Bees, the untransformed larvae fall as dust; here the
honey-stores of old go sour, here the uneaten provisions are reduced to
mould.

Three undertakers, all members of the Beetle tribe, a Clerus, a Ptinus
and an Anthrenus, batten on these remains. The larvae of the Anthrenus
and the Ptinus gnaw the ashes of the corpses; the larva of the Clerus,
with the black head and the rest of its body a pretty pink, appeared to
me to be breaking into the old jam-pots filled with rancid honey. The
perfect insect itself, garbed in vermilion with blue ornaments, is
fairly common on the surface of the clay slabs during the working
season, strolling leisurely through the yard to taste here and there the
drops of honey oozing from some cracked pot. Notwithstanding his showy
livery, so unlike the workers' sombre frieze, the Chalicodomae leave him
in peace, as though they recognized in him the scavenger whose duty it
is to keep the sewers wholesome.

Ravaged by the passing years, the Mason's home at last falls into ruin
and becomes a hovel. Exposed as it is to the direct action of wind and
weather, the dome built upon a pebble chips and cracks. To repair it
would be too irksome, nor would that restore the original solidity of
the shaky foundation. Better protected by the covering of a roof, the
city of the sheds resists longer, without however escaping eventual
decay. The storeys which each generation adds to those in which it was
born increase the thickness and the weight of the edifice in alarming
proportions. The moisture of the tile filters into the oldest layers,
wrecks the foundations and threatens the nest with a speedy fall. It is
time to abandon for good the house with its cracks and rents.

Thereupon the crumbling apartments, on the pebble as well as on the
tile, become the home of a camp of gypsies who are not particular where
they find a shelter. The shapeless hovel, reduced to a fragment of a
wall, finds occupants, for the Mason's work must be exploited to the
utmost limits of possibility. In the blind alleys, all that remains of
the former cells, Spiders weave a white-satin screen, behind which they