82 SUMMER 



ordinary garden-bed. One of the most attractive plants 

 which are usually found by the waterside, and yet require 

 a dry and well-drained soil, is the skull-cap, with its dark 

 blue-lipped blossoms and narrow dark green leaves. Among 

 full-grown trees the common willow has the same prefer- 

 ence. It likes to plunge its roots in a stratum through 

 which water passes freely, but to stand in a sound loam. 

 The sallow, or palm-willow, on the other hand, is fond, like 

 the alder, of a regular mire or slough, where the moorhens 

 dabble among the ooze and the draggled sedges. Here and 

 there, where the river-banks are formed of stiff clay, the bur- 

 marigolds there are two closely similar species lift their 

 solid round blossoms of dull yellow over frills of deeply- 

 cut leaves. In its substantial growth and dull colouring the 

 bur-marigold seems the true offspring of the heavy clays ; 

 and it is a conspicuous plant of the running ditches among 

 the pastures of rural Middlesex, where the London clay 

 nurtures its limited flora. Wild teasels tolerate the same 

 inhospitable soil, and lift their purple heads and water-catch- 

 ing frills of leaves on the same clayey banks of the stream. 

 Drowned insects are often found in these little cisterns, and 

 they might almost provide breeding-places for the larvae of 

 mosquitoes, which are gnats under an imposing name. 



II. THE BIRDS AND INSECTS 



Most of the insects which abound at midsummer by the 

 river spend their earlier stages among the slime and weeds 

 of the stiller reaches, or the gravel of the brisker runs. 

 Mayflies, which rise thickly in early June on many rivers and 

 certain lakes, spend two years in the mud of the river- 

 bed before emerging for a few days at most to court in the 

 air above. The caddis- worms, which drag their varied tubes 



