Edith Carrington, Wonderful Tools, Londres, George Bell, 1897.
The caddis uses the buiding tools which he has in a very adroit manner, and always contrives to build his house out of the materials which he finds scattered around him.
His little home looks just like a bit of the mud, or weed, or gravel in which he lives. There are several kinds of caddis worm, and each likes to build after his own fashion. One species will cut short near bits of crow-foot stem, and fasten them round himself till he looks like a tiny walking faggot.
Another will cover his tube with bits of duck-weed, and stroll about like « Jack-in-the-green ». Some caddises will stick small shells to their backs, bringing glue from their mouths, and always weaving first a little vest of silk as a lining for the tube.
But the most remarkable thing about caddis worm is that, if by any accident he should find himself in a new place, he at once sets to work with frantic haste to patch his quaint dwelling so that it may not look different from the new country.
Should violent thunder showers swell his little ditch or streamlet till it becomes a torent and sweeps him far away from his native lands, he begins to pick up bits and scraps of straw of whatever he finds in the strange place to disguise himself with.
He disguises himself thus as a safeguard against being eaten by fish or other water creatures bigger than himself, and also as a means of enabling himself to feed.