302 Wild Life in Wales 



shower of snow. Though as nothing in comparison with 

 these in numbers, the hundreds that were rising on the 

 water at our feet were ample for as close a study as might 

 be desired. Liberating itself, in true ephemeral fashion, 

 from its pupal case, which rises from the bottom of the 

 water, the insect appears suddenly on the surface, and in a 

 moment has expanded its first wings and tail. Rising with 

 rather heavier flight, and more buzz than might be expected 

 from such an ethereal-looking creature, it makes the land, 

 to alight, as just stated, on the first object that presents 

 itself. Our clothes, hats, faces, and everything, were 

 quickly covered with it ; and when we got home the cast skins 

 still adhering to our garments had to be brushed off in 

 hundreds. It reaches its first resting place with wings and 

 tail spread out, in what a fisherman knows as the spent-gnat 

 attitude ; but almost at once the outer shell cracks, the new 

 wings rise, cocked, above the back, the tail and limbs are 

 wriggled free, and in two or three minutes the perfect 

 insect sails off, this time without unseemly buzz, on its 

 final career. Many, flying upwards, are soon lost to view, 

 but many more join in more or less dense clusters that 

 swing, rising and falling, nearer to earth. Swifts and 

 Swallows fill their bills with them ; Bats, too, are eagerly 

 snapping them up ; and a Nightjar, gliding by on silent 

 wing, brings death to whole troops of them at once, in his 

 wide gape. On grass and gravel, Sandpipers run nimbly 

 hither and thither, picking up what they require ; while an 

 ugly Toad, awkward in the use of every member save his 

 tongue, is sucking in his fill also. It is too dark to see all 

 the countless other enemies that are lying in wait for them, 

 nor boots it to pile up the agony too tall ; suffice it that, 

 when all risks have been passed, enough still remain to lay 

 the millions of eggs that are required to reproduce next 

 year's "rise." 



But the persecution does not cease when the eggs are 

 laid. The latter are, themselves, the sought-for food of 

 many tiny creatures ; while, from the hour they are born, 

 to that, may be twelve months hence, when the surviving 

 nymphs shall again liberate the flies, many creeping things 



