42 OUT OF DOORS. 



wanted, we make our way homeward through the lain 

 and wind, and proceed to the microscope, in order to 

 ascertain the precise character of the fluffy lumps taken 

 from the burrows. 



The day is much too dull and dismal to afford 

 sufficient illumination, so the lamp is lighted, and one 

 of the black objects placed under the half-inch glass. 

 The first glance detects its nature. It is composed 

 entirely of fragments of little flies. Black, shining 

 bodies, heads, and severed wings are clustered thickly 

 together, the wings shining out in every colour of the 

 rainbow, amid the debris with which they are sur- 

 rounded. The sand-grains look like lumps of sugar- 

 candy, the withered, red-brown eyes still show their 

 thousands of hexagonal lenses, the black, hairy legs and 

 fragments of bodies lie about in utter confusion, while 

 the wings, though broken from the body and mixed 

 with sand and all kinds of miscellaneous rubbish, flash 

 and glitter in ripples of crimson, green, gold, and 

 azure. Gauzy and delicate as they are, they have sur- 

 vived the body to which they were once attached, and 

 have not lost one whit of their former beauty. One 

 fly presents a very curious aspect. It is a little black, 

 round-headed fly, quite shrivelled up and withered. It 

 has lost all its legs, but it retains its wings, and adheres 

 to the general mass by the very tips of those organs, 

 projecting itself forward, and looking like a tiny black 

 imp sustained on bright, glittering, many-coloured 

 wings that would do credit to a fairy. Altogether, 



