WATER-STRIDERS 



Run, thoy spend and end their diiys. Their youth, 

 their courtship and mating, their daily excursions for 

 food, with their varied excitements and battles, and 

 their exit from life are all wrought out here. 



The broods gradually decrease, but what are their 

 special enemies I have not yet made out; and they do 

 not seem to be quarrelsome among themselves. How- 

 ever, there is one factor in their lives that is likely to 

 shift for them the scene of action — the summer rains 

 that change our brook in an hour or two from a laugh- 

 ing stream to a roaring torrent. It fills the bed, lips 

 up against the rustic bridge, and has even overflowed 

 the road. What has become of our water-striders ? We 

 will don our rain-coats and go see. 



Here, just above the rustic bridge, is a group of forty 

 or fifty. They hug the bank on either side where the 

 waters go more quietly, and hold close to the grasses 

 that fringe the edge above whose tops the flood is slowly 

 rising. Now and then a venturesome body will push 

 out towards the centre where the current is rough and 

 strong. The rush of the water strikes it full sweep and 

 drives it like an arrow down-stream. One would think 

 it quite impossible that so slight a creature could with- 

 stand the force of such a torrent, on whose crest a 

 heavy four -inch plank has been tossed like a feath- 

 er. But with comparative ease our strider ''backs 

 water" against the current, and with only a short 

 drift downward gets into the calmer eddies of the 

 shore. 



Let me quote the rest of the story from my field 

 notes : " Below the bridge, the mass of rocks that forms 

 a dam across the run is a young Niagara, with its 

 'whirlpool rapids' beyond. Here a few striders have 



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