RIVER GARDENS ; 



considers an effectual defence. There is, as I have 

 said, a certain indefinable charm, especially to a 

 young angler, in watching these larger and better 

 known denizens of the water ; hut how much more 

 eager is the stirred curiosity to define the stranger 

 forms of creatures unknown, or much less fre- 

 quently observed, such as the larvae of many semi- 

 aquatic insects, or the early stages of the Newt, 

 during which his external breathing apparatus, those 

 mysterious branchiae, appear like some parasitic 

 plant springing from his head. How much more 

 eagerly the eye follows the gem-like gleam, as it 

 passes, which is emitted from the air-filled globule 

 of the Water-spider, shooting past like an aquatic 

 firefly, but bearing a flame of silver instead of gold; 

 and then the mysteriously moving mass that con- 

 tains the Caddis-worm, or the strange antics of the 

 larva of the Gnat. These are the moving things, with 

 hundreds of other kindred shapes, which fill the 

 young imagination with elfin pictures, dream-like 

 as those it might embody in some dark chamber of 

 romance. How often did I try, frequently at the 

 risk of falling headlong into the deep pond, to 

 fish up some of the dimly-seen creatures which so 

 strongly excited my curiosity ! But they generally 

 escaped through the meshes of the little net I had 



