THE CHAMELEON FLY. 171 



drains, or puddles, they are necessarily exposed to 

 the risk of suffocation, unless fresh air can be con- 

 veyed to them ; and it is difficult for us to imagine 

 how any apparatus could have been contrived 

 which would have adapted itself to all the varying 

 depths of water in which the insect must be con- 

 stantly living, as it changes from place to place. 

 He must have been a clever engineer who could 

 have successfully met this difficulty. None of our 

 present diving apparatus does so. The organ we 

 have been considering, the creation of an Infinite 

 Mind, small and despicable as it may seem in our 

 eyes, fulfils perfectly every function for which it 

 was formed. It admits of free movement from 

 place to place, it admits, moreover, of free change 

 from one level to another in the fluid by which the 

 larva is surrounded, and it is at the entire disposal 

 of the insect, which can, without the smallest in- 

 convenience, accommodate it to the various cir- 

 cumstances in which it may be placed. 



Possibly the same phial in which was brought 

 home the last-named larvae with the rat's tail, 

 will furnish us with an equally elegant instance 

 of larva-respiration under water, in the case of the 

 larva of a fly, called the chameleon fly. This 



