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 riddle. Let us rear the insect, collect its eggs; then the pottery will tell us the secret of its beginnings. I install three species of Clythrae under wire-gauze covers, each with a bed of sand and a bottle of water containing a few young ilex-shoots, which I renew as and when they fade. All three species are common on the holm-oak: they are the Long-legged Clythra (_C. longipes_, FAB.), the Four-spotted Clythra (_C. quadripunctata_, LIN.), and the Taxicorn Clythra (_C. taxicornis_, FAB.). I set up a second menagerie with some Cryptocephali, who are closely related to the Clythrae. The inmates are the Ilex Cryptocephalus (_C. ilicis_, OLIV.), the Two-spotted Cryptocephalus (_C. bipunctatus_, LIN.) and the Golden Cryptocephalus (_C. hypochoeridis_, LIN.), who wears a resplendent costume. For the first two I provide sprigs of ilex; for the third, the heads of a centaury (_Centaurea aspera_), which is the favourite plant of this living gem. There is nothing striking in the habits of my captives, who spend the morning very quietly, the first five browsing on their oak-leaves and the sixth on her centaury-blooms. When the sun grows hot, they fly from the bunch of leaves in the centre to the wire trellis and back from the trellis to the leaves, or wander about the top of the cage in a state of great excitement. Every moment couples are formed. They pester each other, pair without preliminaries, part without regrets and begin elsewhere all over again. Life is sweet; and there are enough for all to choose from. Several are persistent. Mounted on the back of the patient female, who lowers her head and seems untouched by the passionate storm, they shake her violently. Thus do the amorous insects declare their flame and win the consent of the hesitating fair.