64 OUT OF DOORS. 



within a short time. This envelope is drawn from the 

 body in an almost perfect state. It is exceedingly fine, 

 like goldbeater's skin, and, if a card be slipped beneath 

 it as it floats in the water, the skin can be spread out on 

 it, and so removed, dried, and preserved as a specimen. 

 Two such skins are now before me, and very pretty 

 objects they are, every toe of each foot being quite 

 perfect, and looking like fairy gloves. 



As to aquatic insects, the water swarms with them, 

 and the number of water-beetles alone that I found 

 there is prodigious. This not being an entomological 

 work I do not intend to give a list of the insects 

 found in this little pond, but will only mention some of 

 the principal species. 



There was the great water-beetle {Dyticus margin- 

 alis) in plenty. This, in common with all of its kind, 

 is not an eligible inhabitant of an aquarium. If two or 

 three be placed in a vessel with other inhabitants of 

 the water, they immediately begin eating their fellow 

 prisoners, and, having finished all the smaller creatures, 

 attack each other, the strongest killing and eating the 

 weakest. I have before me a very fine male Dyticus 

 in a pickle-bottle, where I was compelled to banish him 

 in consequence of his voracity. I feed him mostly on 

 blue-bottles, which he seizes between his powerful fore- 

 legs, and devours in a very short time. At first he was 

 rather puzzled with the flies, they not being his usual 

 prey, but he now knows how to manage them, and a fly 

 scarcely touches the surface of the water when it is 



