io MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



gets his opportunity of wild duck for dinner. In 

 earliest autumn, when the "flappers" can just fly, 

 and their father is laying aside his dull nursery suit 

 for his proper drake's garb of green and grey, auburn 

 and silver, there is easy shooting and good eating to 

 be had from woodside streams and osier bed. But 

 months elapse before the opportunity returns, when 

 the drakes, in the full splendour of their breeding 

 plumage, escort their willing wives to the snug corners 

 where, the weather tempting, they prematurely con- 

 sider the question of raising another family. 



GNATS IN JANUARY. 



The lesser life of stream and pool obeys the same 

 weather laws as the mallard. Where the stagnant 

 water is filmed with silver grey, in the quiet back- 

 water behind the rushes, you will find, during any 

 spell of January's "abnormal mildness," that the 

 wriggling, twisting progeny of autumn's gnats have 

 in their turn reached the stage at which it becomes 

 incumbent on them to hang with crooked backs to 

 the filmy surface of the water, waiting till their skin 

 splits down what would be their spine, if they had 

 one, and releases the perfect gnat. Far from perfect 

 is he, however, on first appearance. His silvery 

 wings, that are to be, look little better than flimsy 

 rags of cobweb, and all of his limbs are so soft and 

 unsubstantial that if you breathe upon him he will 

 collapse, a battered wreck, upon the sticky surface 

 of the water. Apart from the rare risk of man's 

 clumsy inquisitiveness, it is a perilous quarter of an 

 hour that the new gnat spends in this world of 



