Our common Magpie has similar tastes: any shiny thing that he comes upon he picks up, hides and hoards.
Well, the Eumenes, who shares this passion for bright pebbles and empty snail-shells, is the Bower-bird of the insect world; but she is a more practical collector, knows how to combine the useful and the ornamental and employs her finds in the construction of her nest, which is both a fortress and a museum.

When she finds nodules of translucent quartz, she rejects everything else: the building will be all the prettier for them.

When she comes across a little white shell, she hastens to beautify her dome with it; should fortune smile and empty snail-shells abound, she encrusts the whole fabric with them, until it becomes the supreme expression of her artistic taste.

Is this so?
Or is it not so?
Who shall decide?
The nest of Eumenes pomiformis is the size of an average cherry and constructed of pure mortar, without the least outward pebblework.

Its shape is exactly similar to that which we have just described.