THE WATER CABINET. 1323 
the brook water be dipped to fill the jar with, and a few 
light weeds thrown in to supply oxygen. ‘These larva 
are the produce of eggs deposited in a curious manner. _ 
The gnats repair to the water soon after day-break, 
and commence an operation of a truly naval kind, 
such as would have delighted the savage heart of Peter 
the Great, could he have witnessed it in the midst of 
his dreams of achieving naval power. In fact, the mother 
gnats construct rafts of eggs, and each egg is added as a 
separate timber of the vessel, till a boat-like structure is 
produced. The skill as well as the necessity of the 
construction is well tested by the fact that each separate 
egg would of itself sink to the bottom, whereas being 
protruded one by one into the angle formed by the hind 
legs which serve as stocks for the future vessel, and suc- 
cessively glued to each other by the fluid which exudes 
with them, they gradually assume, under her guidance, 
a neat boat-like form of about three hundred minute 
pyramidal eggs. 
“The most violent agitation,” says Kirby, ‘ cannot sink 
it, and what is more extraordinary, and a property still a 
disideratum in our life-boats, though hollow it never 
becomes filled with water, even though exposed.” 
The grubs at last come forth, and lead a very merry 
sort of life under the shadow of the sedges. Placed in 
the jars they appear at first sight lke newly hatched fry 
of fishes, but we soon detect the segments of their pellucid 
bodies, and, as might be expected in water larva, they 
breathe at the wrong end, and hence most of their merry 
movements are performed between the surface and the 
