Note 2 — Chapter III · THE PELOPÆUS

The cells are not far removed from the cylindrical shape, with a diameter increasing slightly from the mouth to the base. They measure three centimetres2 in length, their breadth where they are widest being about fifteen millimetres.3 Their delicate surface, carefully polished, shows a series of stringy projections, running obliquely, not altogether unlike the twisted cords of certain kinds of gold-lace. Each of these strings is a layer of the edifice; it comes from the clod of mud employed on the coping of the part already built. By numbering them one can tell how many journeys the Pelopæus has taken to her mortar. I count between fifteen and twenty. For one cell, therefore, the industrious builder fetches materials something like twenty times and perhaps even oftener, for one of these cushions of mud is not always, so it seems to me, completed in a single spell of work.