A DAY ON TWEED 263 



Being concealed it must have considered itself safe, 

 but on being exposed to the air it becomes quite 

 inert, allowing itself to be touched. We see, or 

 imagine we see, the breathing processes vainly 

 striving to extract the necessary element from the 

 film of water. Gently to the stream we lower the 

 stone, and the nymph, as soon as it feels the first 

 touch of the water, vanishes. 



On another stone is a small mass of white jelly; 

 it shrinks and swells, lengthens and shortens, 

 stands on one end and waves the other, and makes 

 astonishing progress. We can distinguish no organs. 

 This is something beyond our ken, but it has no 

 appealing beauty to make us desire its closer 

 acquaintance. 



More interesting are the caddis-tubes, scores of 

 them, all nicely decorated with minute pieces of 

 gravel. We are inclined to think that there is some 

 attempt at a colour design, the red, the white, 

 the black and the rest being so well intermingled. 

 They are absolutely still, for they have shut them- 

 selves behind a gravel grating to rest until the time 

 comes for them to take wing. Now we see a tiny 

 twig from a miniature tree, or so it appears at 

 first, but a closer view shows it to consist of six 

 short, smooth tubes, lightly attached together, and 

 each of them contains a life which we do not allow 

 our curiosity to destroy. What a wealth of life 

 there is in Tweed ! 



Here beside us on the dry gravel, neglected until 

 now, are two duns of exceeding minuteness and 

 frailty, smaller than the autumn Iron-Blue, and that 

 is small indeed. Yet they stand up to the wind, 

 but refuse to venture a flight. Near them is another 



