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The Taxicorn Clythra is the first in the field; I see her at working during the last days of May. A most singular and disconcerting batch of eggs is hers! Is it really a group of eggs? I hesitate until I surprise the mother using her hind-legs to finish extracting the strange germ which issues slowly and perhaps laboriously from her oviduct. It is indeed the Taxicorn Clythra's batch.
One of our Land-snails, the Bulimus, whose shell is continued into a turret, moves almost in the same fashion, tumbling repeatedly as he goes. The Clythra's is a shapely jar and does credit to the insect's art of pottery.
The Clythra's jar is a piece of work entailing no little delicacy of execution. I can quite well see how the grub lengthens and enlarges it; but I cannot imagine how it begins it. If it has nothing to serve as a mould and a base, how does it set to work to assemble the first layers of paste into a neatly-shaped cup?
Not a fortnight has elapsed before a strip, built up on the rim, has doubled the length of the Long-legged Clythra's shell, in order to maintain the capacity of the earthenware jar in proportion to the size of the grub, which has been growing from day to day.
The Long-legged Clythra's are a very dark brown and remind one of a thimble, a comparison which is the more exact inasmuch as they are dented with quadrangular pits, arranged in spiral series which cross one another with exquisite precision. Those of the Four-spotted Clythra are pale in colour.
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