in elegance,
with its dainty laths, all stacked crosswise, methodically; and, lo
and behold, the builder, grown larger, more experienced and, one would
think, more skilful, abandons the orderly plan to adopt another which
is wild and incoherent! There is no transition stage between the two
systems. The extravagant pile rises abruptly from the original basket.
But that we often find the two kinds of work placed one above the other,
we would not dare ascribe to them a common origin. The fact of their
being joined together is the only thing that makes them one, in spite of
the incongruity.

But the two storeys do not last indefinitely. When the worm has grown
slightly and is housed to its satisfaction in a heap of joists, it
abandons the basket of its childhood, which has become too narrow and is
now a troublesome burden. It cuts through its sheath, lops off and lets
go the stern, the original work. When moving to a higher and roomier
flat, it understands how to lighten its portable house by breaking off
a part of it. All that remains is the upper floor, which is enlarged
at the aperture, as and when required, by the same architecture of
disordered beams.

Side by side with these cases, which are mere ugly faggots, we find
others just as often of exquisite beauty and composed entirely of tiny
shells. Do they come from the same workshop? It takes very convincing
proofs to make us believe this. Here is order with its charm, there
disorder with its hideousness; on the one hand a dainty mosaic of
shells, on the other a clumsy heap of sticks. And yet it is all produced
by the same laborer.

Proofs abound. On some case which offends the eye with the want of
arrangement in its bits of wood, patches are apt to appear which are
quite regular and made of shells; in the same way, it is not unusual to
see a horrid tangle of joists braced to a masterpiece of shell work.
One feels a certain annoyance at seeing the pretty sheath so barbarously
spoilt.

This mixed construction tells us that the rustic stacker of wooden beams
excels, when occasion offers, in making elegant shell pavements and that
it practices rough carpentry and delicate mosaic work indifferently.
In the latter instance, the scabbard is made, above all, of Planorbes,
selected among the smaller of these pond snails and laid flat. Without
being scrupulously regular, the work, at its best, does not lack merit.
The pretty, close-whorled spirals, placed one against the ot