arge seeds, empty shells, stubble stalks,
shapeless fragments are used in the building for better or for worse,
just as they occur, without being trimmed by the saw; and this jumble,
the result of chance, results in a shockingly faulty structure.

The caddis worm does not forget its talents; but it lacks choice
pieces. Give it a proper timber yard and it at once reverts to correct
architecture, of which it carries the plans within itself. With small,
dead pond snails, all of the same size, it fashions a splendid patchwork
scabbard; with a cluster of slender roots, reduced by rotting to their
stiff, straight, woody axis, it manufactures pretty specimens of wicker
work which could serve as models to our basket makers.

Let us watch it at work when it is unable to use its favorite joist.
There is no point in giving it clumsy building stones; that would only
bring us back to the uncouth sheaths. Its propensity to make use of
soaked seeds, those of the iris, for instance, suggests that I might
try grains. I select rice, which, because of its hardness, will be
tantamount to wood and, because of its clean whiteness and its oval
shape, will lend itself to artistic masonry.

Obviously, my denuded caddis worms cannot start their work with bricks
of this kind. Where would they fix their first layer? They must have
a foundation, quick and easy to build. This is once more supplied by
a temporary cylinder of watercress roots. On this support follow the
grains of rice, which, grouped one atop the other, straight or slanting,
end by giving a magnificent turret of ivory. Next to the sheaths made
of tiny snail shells, this is the prettiest thing with which the caddis
worm's industry has furnished me. A fine sense of order has returned,
because the materials, regular and of identical character, have
cooperated with the correct method of the worker.

The two demonstrations are enough. Sticks and grains of rice make it
plain that the caddis worm is not the bungler that one would expect from
the monstrous buildings in the pond. Those Cyclopean piles, those mad
conglomerations, are the inevitable results of chance finds, which are
used for the best because there is no choice. The water carpenter has
an art of its own, has method and rules of symmetry. When well served
by fortune, it is quite able to turn out good work; when ill-served, it
acts like others: the work which it turns out is bad. Poverty makes for
ugliness.

There is another