1 78 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



are coated with little houses slated with chips about 

 the size of these letters, most knowingly cemented 

 together. Others, like the well-known caddis, have 

 shins or overcoats of stick or stone, which give them 

 the advantage of armour without the inconvenience of 

 a fixed abiding-place. Every day the stream gives up 

 a fresh horde of specifically new insects to dance in the 

 sun and then return to feed the trout. All our dragon- 

 flies, from the indigo-green or bronze-winged drakes 

 and feeble demoiselles to the great whizzing " horse- 

 stinger," come from the water. We catch the biggest 

 of them all, and find that a fat fly between his jaws 

 was the absorbing event that permitted us to steal a 

 march on him. He is so rapt in its juiciness that he 

 mumbles it between our fingers till it is all gone. But 

 if you give this great dragon-fly warning of your inten- 

 tion to catch him, you can have no warier antagonist. 

 He measures to a nicety the length of your butterfly- 

 net, and seems to delight in letting you get almost 

 within striking distance, and in dashing to and fro just 

 beyond its sphere of influence. 



But where is water for heather and whortle-berries 

 these brazen days ? Before the sun has mounted half- 

 way the sky is pitiless blue. At times, some taunting, 

 unreachable argosy sails along on some errand entirely 

 unconnected with our wants. Most promising young 

 thunder-clouds, rolled into crisp billows that speak of 

 electrical restraint, show their backs above the hills, 

 then revolve out of sight like some marine monster that 

 has been up for a breather and gone back to its own 

 world. But the heat of the world, whether physical 

 or mental, is not diminished by such dreams of cool 

 showers. Most life has fled from the moors. The 



