The main axis of the cells is horizontal, or not far removed from it; the mouth is always turned upwards. And this must needs be so: a pot cannot hold its contents save on condition that it be not upside down. The Pelopæus’ cell is nothing more than a pot destined to receive the preserved foodstuffs, a pile of small Spiders. When laid horizontally or slanting a little upwards, the receptacle holds its contents; but with the mouth turned downwards it would lose them. I have lingered a moment over this petty detail to call attention to a curious mistake current in the text-books. Wherever I find a drawing of a Pelopæus-nest, I see it with the orifices of the cells facing downwards. The illustrations go on and on: to-day’s reproduces yesterday’s absurdity. I do not know who was the first to perpetrate this blunder and to think of subjecting the Pelopæus to a task no less arduous than that of the vessel of the Danaides: to fill a pot turned upside down. Built one by one, stuffed full of Spiders and closed as and when the laying demands it, the cells retain their elegant exterior until the cluster is deemed large enough. Then, to strengthen her work, the Pelopæus covers the whole with a defensive casing; she lays on the plaster with an unsparing trowel, without artistry or any of those delicate and patient finishing-touches which she lavishes upon the work of the cells. The pellet is applied just as it is brought and merely spread with a few careless strokes of the mandibles. Thus the original beauties of the structure—the flutings between the cells sat back to back, the corded cushions, the polished stucco—all disappear under a forbidding husk. In this final state, the nest is nothing more than a shapeless protuberance; one would take it for a great splash of mud that had been flung against the wall by accident and dried there. We find similar methods among the Chalicodomæ. The best mason among them, after she has erected her cells on a pebble, building them in the form of turrets daintily encrusted with bits of gravel, buries her artistic work under a clumsy plaster. Why do they both give this finish and devote such fastidious care to the frontage, when the masterpiece is doomed to disappear, deluged in mortar? We do not build a Louvre and then abandon its colonnades to the unclean trowel. But we must not press the analogy too far. What do insects care about the beauty or ugliness of an edifice, provided that the larva be comfortably housed? With them we must be prepared for all the inconsistencies of the unconscious artist. CHAPTER IV THE AGENIÆ; THE PELOPÆUS’ VICTUALS