Note 1 — Chapter IX · INSECT GEOMETRY

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.1 The slender Wasp and the heavy Dung-beetle, employing dissimilar tools and materials, work after the same pattern.