STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 39 



CHAPTER II. 



Ponds and Rock-pools. Our necessary Tackle. Wimbledon 

 Common. Early Memories. Gnat Larvae. Entomostraca 

 and their Paradoxes. Races of Animals dispensing with the 

 sterner Sex. Insignificance of Males. Volvox Globator : is it 

 an Animal? Plants swimming like Animals. Animal Retro- 

 gressions. The Dytiscus and its Larva. The Dragon-fly Lar- 

 va. Mollusks and their Eggs. Polypes, and how to find them. 

 A new Polype, Hydra rubra. Nest-building Fish. Con- 

 tempt replaced by Reverence. 



THE day is bright with a late autumn sun ; the 

 sky is clear with a keen autumn wind, which lashes 

 our blood into a canter as we press against it, and 

 the cantering blood sets the thoughts into hurrying 

 excitement. "Wimbledon Common is not far off; 

 its five thousand acres of undulating heather, furze, 

 and fern tempt us across it, health streaming in at 

 every step as we snuff the keen breeze. We are 

 tempted also to bring net and wide-mouthed jar, to 

 ransack its many ponds for visible and invisible 

 wonders. 



Ponds, indeed, are not so rich and lovely as rock- 

 pools ; the heath is less alluring than the coast 

 our dear-loved coast, with its gleaming mystery, the 

 sea, and its sweeps of sand, its reefs, its dripping 

 boulders. I admit the comparative inferiority of 

 ponds, but, you see, we are not near the coast, and 



