CHAPTER IX 



THE GREENBOTTLES 



T HAVE wished for a few things in my 

 ■*■ life, none of them capable of interfering 

 with the common weal. I have longed to 

 possess a pond, screened from the indiscre- 

 tion of the passers-by, close to my house, with 

 clumps of rushes and patches of duckweed. 

 Here, in my leisure hours, in the shade of a 

 willow, I should have meditated upon aquatic 

 life, a primitive life, easier than our own, 

 simpler in its affections and its brutalities. I 

 should have watched the unalloyed happiness 

 of the Mollusc, the frolics of the Whirligig, 

 the figure-skating of the Hydrometra, 1 the 

 dives of the Dytiscus Beetle, the veering and 

 tacking of the Notonecta, 2 who, lying on her 

 back, rows with two long oars, while her 

 short fore-legs, folded against her chest, wait 

 to grab the coming prey. I should have stud- 

 ied the eggs of the Planorbis, a glairy nebula 



i A Water-bug, known as the Pond-skater, who runs 

 about actively, on her middle- and hind-legs, on the 

 surface of fresh water. — Translator's Note. 



2 A Bug known also as the Water-boatman. — Trans- 

 lator's Note. 



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