This mixed construction tells us that the rustic stacker of wooden
beams excels, when occasion offers, in making elegant shell
pavements and that it practices rough carpentry and delicate mosaic
work indifferently. In the latter instance, the scabbard is made,
above all, of Planorbes, selected among the smaller of these pond
snails and laid flat. Without being scrupulously regular, the
work, at its best, does not lack merit. The pretty, close-whorled
spirals, placed one against the other on the same level, have a
very pleasing general effect. No pilgrim returning from Santiago
de Compostella ever slung handsomer tippet from his shoulders.

But only too often the caddis worm dashes ahead, regardless of
proportion. The big is joined to the small, the exaggerated
suddenly stands out, to the great detriment of order. Side by side
with tiny Planorbes, each at most the size of a lentil, others are
fixed as large as one's fingernail; and these cannot possibly be
fitted in correctly. They overlap the regular parts and spoil
their finish.

To crown the disorder, the caddis worm adds to the flat spirals any
dead shell that comes handy, without distinction of species,
provided it be not excessively large. I notice, in its collection
of bric-a-brac, the Physa, the Paludina, the Limnaea, the Amber
snail [all pond snails] and even the Pisidium [a bivalve], that
little twin-valved casket.

Land shells, swept into the ditches by the rains after the inmate's
death, are accepted quite as readily. In the work made of the
Mollusk's cast-off clothing, I find encrusted the spindle shell of
the Clausilium, the key shell of the pupa, the spiral of the