This does not mean that all the nourishment is absorbed. There is certainly refuse of no nutritive value, but it is thin and almost fluid. Can this be the pitch that cements and stops up the chinks? Why not? If so, the grub would be building with its excrement; with its ordure it would be making a pretty home. Here we must silence our repugnance. Where would you have the recluse obtain the material for its casket? Its cell is its world. It knows nothing beyond that cell; nothing comes to its assistance. It must perish if it cannot find its store of cement within itself. Various caterpillars, not rich enough to afford the luxury of a perfect cocoon, have the knack of felting their hairs with a little silk. The Larinus grub, that poverty-stricken creature, having no spinning-mill, must have recourse to its intestine, its only stand-by. This stercoral method proves once more that necessity is the mother of invention. To build a luxurious palace with one’s ordure is a most meritorious device. Only an insect would be capable of it. For that matter, the Larinus has no monopoly of this architectural style, which is not described in Vitruvius, [26] Many other larvæ, better-furnished with building-materials—those of the Onites, the Onthophagi, [27] the Cetoniæ, [28] for example—greatly excel it in the beauty of their excremental edifices. When completed, on the approach of the nymphosis, the abode of the Larinus is an oval cell measuring fifteen millimetres in length by ten in width. [29] Its compact structure almost enables it to resist the pressure of the fingers. Its main diameter runs parallel with the axis of the thistle-head. When, as is not unusual, three cells are grouped on the same support, the whole is not unlike the fruit of the castor-oil-plant, with its three shaggy husks. The outer wall of the cell is a rustic bristle of chips and hairy débris and above all of whole florets, faded and yellow, torn from their base and pushed out of place while retaining their natural arrangement. In the thickness of the wall the cement predominates. The inner wall is polished, washed with a red-brown lacquer and sprinkled with an incrustation of ligneous fragments. Lastly, the pitch is of excellent quality. It makes a solid wall of the work; and, moreover, it is impervious to moisture: when immersed in water, the cell does not permit any to pass through to the interior. In short, the Larinus’ cell is a comfortable dwelling, endowed, in the beginning, with the pliancy of soft leather, which allows free scope for the growing-process; then, thanks to the cement, it hardens into a shell permitting the peaceful somnolence of the transformation. The flexible tent of the early days becomes a stout manor-house.