THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 207 
with one long pair of oars, in search of animalcules, 
and the moment the lights are out, turns head over 
heels, rights himself, and opening a pair of hand- 
some wings, starts to fly about the dark room in 
company with his friend the water-beetle, and (I 
suspect) catch flies; and then slips back demurely 
into the water with the first streak of dawn. But 
perhaps the most interesting of all the tribes of the 
Naiads,—(in default, of course, of those semi-human 
nymphs with which our Teutonic forefathers, like 
the Greeks, peopled each “sacred fountain,”)—are 
the little “ water-crickets,” which may be found 
running under the pebbles, or burrowing in little 
galleries in the banks: and those “caddises,” which 
crawl on the bottom in the stiller waters, enclosed, 
all save the head and legs, in a tube of sand or 
pebbles, shells or sticks, green or dead weeds, often 
arranged with quaint symmetry, or of very graceful 
shape. Their aspect in this state may be somewhat 
uninviting, but they compensate for their youthful 
ugliness by the strangeness of their transformations, 
and often by the delicate beauty of the perfect 
