E. unguiculata does worse. After building, on some big stone, a group of cells which, in shape, ornamental encrustation and bell-mouthed neck, rival those of E. Amadei, she buries the whole under a layer of mortar. She imitates the Chalicodoma and the Pelopæus, who, for reasons of domestic safety, follow up artistic daintiness with the uncouthness of the fortress. Inspired by a system of æsthetics which nothing is able to evade, both insects begin by creating beauty; dominated by the fear of danger, they end by creating ugliness. Other Eumenes, on the contrary, of smaller size, build cells which are always isolated and which often have the twig of a shrub for a support. The structure is a cupola, similar to those already mentioned, and, like them, provided with a graceful neck, but without the gravel mosaic. The tiny fabric, no bigger than a cherry, does not admit of this rustic ornamentation. The potter replaces it by a few specks of clay distributed here and there. The Eumenes who build a succession of cells in groups are compelled to deform the chamber under construction according to the space left by those preceding it; for the beautiful curve of their original design they substitute, by force of circumstances, the unpleasing broken line. The others, those who build each cell in isolation, are far from perpetrating such inaccuracies. From first to last, as many as the establishment of the larvæ requires, now on this twig, now on that, the cells are built of an identical shape, just as though they had issued from the same mould. Now that nothing hinders the exact application of the rules, order returns and produces a series of structures which are no less perfect at the end than at the beginning. If the insect were to build a general shelter, in which each larva had its individual box, what would this building, this common home of the family, be? On condition, of course, that no obstacle intervene, the work will always be correct in its geometry, which will vary according to the builder’s speciality. I could draw you a child’s balloon than which none prettier was ever inflated in toyland, or, for that matter, in fairyland; and it would be exactly like the nest of a Median Wasp (Vespa media, De Geer). The person who gave me this marvel found it hanging from the lower edge of a shutter which was left open for the greater part of the year. Possessing liberty of action in all directions, except at the point of contact with the shutter, the Wasp followed the rules of her art without impediment. With a paper of her own manufacture, tough and flexible as the silk papers of China and Japan, she contrived to expand her work into a segment of an ellipsoid, with a cone added to it by means of a gentle curve. A like association of forms artistically combined is found in the Sacred Beetle’s pears. [62] The slender Wasp and the heavy Dung-beetle, employing dissimilar tools and materials, work after the same pattern.