Its paradoxical method is this: of the lining it makes cloth, bringing to the outside what was inside. Little by little, as the need makes itself felt, the grub scrapes and strips the interior of its cell. Reduced to a soft paste by means of a little putty furnished by the intestine, the scrapings are applied over the whole of the outer surface, down to the far end, which the grub, thanks to its perfect flexibility, is able to reach without taking too much trouble or leaving its house. This turning of the coat is accomplished with a delicate precision 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?