Sooner or later, the worm forsakes this kind of caltrop which
catches on to everything. It was a basket maker, it now turns
carpenter; it builds with little beams and joists--that is to say,
with round bits of wood, browned by the water, often as wide as a
thick straw and a finger's-breadth long, more or less--taking them
as chance supplies them.

For the rest, there is something of everything in this rag bag:
bits of stubble, fag ends of rushes, scraps of plants, fragments of
some tiny twig or other, chips of wood, shreds of bark, largish
grains, especially the seeds of the yellow iris, which were red
when they fell from their capsules and are now black as jet.

The heterogeneous collection is piled up anyhow. Some pieces are
fixed lengthwise, others across, others aslant. There are angles
in this direction and angles in the other, resulting in sharp
little turns and twists; the big is mixed with the little, the
correct rubs shoulders with the shapeless. It is not an edifice,
it is a frenzied conglomeration. Sometimes, a fine disorder is an
effect of art. This is not so here: the work of the Caddis worm is
not a masterpiece worth signing.

And this mad heaping up follows straight upon the regular basket
work of the start. The young grub's fascine did not lack a certain
elegance, with its dainty laths, all stacked crosswise,
methodically; and, lo and behold, the builder, grown larger, more
experienced and, one would think, more skilful, abandons the
orderly plan to adopt another which is wild and incoherent! There
is no transition stage between the two systems. The extravagant
pile rises abruptly from the original basket. But that we often