MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 369 



parties of ten or a dozen, near the bank, where some 

 little projection forms a bay, or renders the water 

 particularly tranquil; and here they will circle round 

 each other without contention, each in his sphere, 

 and with no apparent object, from morning until 

 night, with great sprightliness and animation; and so 

 lightly do they move on the fluid, as to form only 

 some faint and transient circles on its surface. Very 

 fond of society, we seldom see them alone, or, if 

 parted by accident, they soon rejoin their busy com- 

 panions. One pool commonly affords space for the 

 amusement of several parties; yet they do not unite 

 or contend, but perform their cheerful circlings in 

 separate family associations. If we interfere with 

 their merriment they seem greatly alarmed, disperse, 

 or dive to the bottom, where their fears shortly sub- 

 side, as we soon again see our little merry friends 

 gamboling as before. This plain, tiny, gliding 

 water-flea seems a very unlikely creature to arrest 

 our young attentions; but the boy with his angle has 

 not often much to engage his notice, and the social 

 active parties of this nimble swimmer, presenting 

 themselves at these periods of vacancy, become in- 

 sensibly familiar to his sight, and by many of us are 

 not observed in after-life without recalling former 

 hours, scenes of, perhaps, less anxious days: for 

 trifles like these, by reason of some association, are 

 often remembered, when things of greater moment 

 pass off and leave no trace upon the mind. '* 



* The gyrinus,' say Kirby and Spence, * seems 

 the merriest and most agile of all the inhabitants of 

 the waves. Wonderful is the velocity with which 

 they turn round and round, as it were pursuing each 

 other in incessant circles, sometimes moving in 

 oblique, and indeed in every other direction. Now 

 and then they repose on the surface as if fatigued 



* Journal of a Naturalist, p. 307^ 



