MY WATER-LOVERS. 49 



Now in March, when, amid the grass of spring, 

 the dry, gray teasel stalks lie broken off or stand 

 toppling to their fall, their brittle, hollow stems 

 are still useful to the minor creatures. In many 

 of the gray towers of the stalks abide spiders, clad 

 in red and black, or the latter color only, sitting 

 in grimness, like barons in the mediaeval towers 

 of yore, and intent on the same business that 

 those gentlemen followed, the murdering of un- 

 wary travellers. Very frequently one will find a 

 lady-bug with the spider, usually a defunct lady- 

 bug, one of the kind that is red with no black 

 dots on its back. Others there are with thirteen 

 spots, and once I cut into a teasel tower contain- 

 ing a company of ants. If you look under the 

 leaves of the fresh teasels which are springing 

 up at the feet of the old ones, you may find per- 

 chance a snail, the hermit of this the Mediaeval 

 Age of Teasel Land. 



Not always are the teasels friends of the insect 

 tribe, however. These broad -based leaves form 

 little hollows in which the showers deposit water 

 in which unwary creatures are sometimes drowned. 



Did you ever listen to the music that a crowd 

 of dry teasel stems makes when moved by the 

 wind ? The sound is as musical as that one makes 

 by blowing through a comb. Perhaps the spiders 

 find such music lulling as the wind rocks them to 

 sleep in the teasel towers. 



Hordes of small caterpillars eat the teasel leaves 



