Anonyme, « Wonders of Pond Life », Chicago, The Delphian Course, vol. VII, 1913, p. 479.

The crew of that wonderful submarine ship of Jules Verne’s imagination never encouttered more suprising creatures than one can collect ina day’s search in any pond or stream within a radius of ten miles of the metropolis. The gigantic mollusk seen by Nemo at the bottom of the ocean would be less amazing to me than the larvae f the May-fly, the common caddis-worm, which have the curious instinct of building for themselves millions of homes for the protection of their dainty bodies against the crafty and greedy fish. There are several species two of which we will at once put under our glass. They are working amid a thousand perils; here a playful shiner swims up noiselessly to nibble, but the stonemason suddenly quits his labor and goes in. The danger being over, it cautiously shows its head again and resumes the occupation of clutching with its mandibles and feet small grains of sand, actually turning each grain over and over, as the workman in building a stone wall with turn a rock in his hands to decide its best fitting-place. Then with water-proof cement (saliva) it places grain after grain around the end of the case, until it is completed. In this little round stone house it crawls along on the bottom of the tank , comparatively safe, proving too much for even a fish’s curiosity but at the expense of a very heavy burden, and, when in its native stream, eking out a most precarious existence of two years.