36 FOOD OF FISHES. 



when taken from their cases, make excellent baits for 

 almost every sort of fish l . 



Grubs of Day Flies, and other Insects. 



The grubs or young of the various species of day 

 flies known to naturalists by the term Ephemeridce, and 

 to anglers by the various names of duns, drakes, and 

 may flies, such as the dun drake or march brown, the 

 blue dun, the green drake or green may fly, are often 

 found in considerable abundance about the roots of water 

 plants, and in the clay forming the banks of ponds and 

 canals, in which they excavate burrows for themselves 

 under the level of the water, an operation well described 

 by Scopoli, Swammerdam, and Reaumur. The exca- 

 vations are always proportioned to the size of the 

 inhabitant; and consequently, when it is young and 

 small, the hole is proportionably small, though, with 

 respect to extent, it is always at least double the length 

 of its body. The hole being under the level of the 

 river, is always filled with water, so that the grub 

 swims in its native element, and while it is secured 

 from being preyed upon by fishes, it has its own food 

 within easy reach. It feeds, in fact, if we may judge 

 from its egesta, upon the slime or moistened clay with 

 which its hole is lined. In the bank of the stream 

 at Lee, in Kent, I found an old willow stump full of 

 holes stuffed with clay, in which the grubs in question 

 nestled securely. 



(l) For other details respecting these, see my Insect Architecture, 

 chap. x. 



