GNAT'S LIFE OF BUOYANCY. 27 



at the end of our dancers' lives, without having said a word 

 about their beginning. Well, we have nothing for it but to 

 go backwards, jumping over the steps already made, up to the 

 premier pas, our aerial performer's birth and parentage. 



Now for the beginning of the Gnat's life of Buoyancy, 

 which commences on the water. Man has been believed by 

 the nations of antiquity to have 



'* Learned of the little Nautilus to sail, 

 Spread the thin oar, and catch the rising gale ;" 



but he might also have taken a first lesson in boat-building 

 from an object common in almost every pond, though, certainly, 

 not so likely to attract attention as the craft of that bold 

 mariner, the little Argonaut. This object is a boat of eggs, 

 not a boat egg-laden ; nor yet that witch's transport, an egg- 

 shell boat, but a buoyant life-boat, curiously constructed of her 

 own eggs by the common Gnat. The boat may be seen, at 

 home and at all hours, within the convenient compass of a 

 basin filled from an adjacent pond. When complete, the boat 

 consists of from 250 to 350 eggs, of which, though each is 

 heavy enough to sink in water, the whole compose a structure 

 perfectly buoyant, so buoyant as to float amidst the most violent 

 agitation. What is yet more wonderful, though hollow, it 

 never fills with water, and even if we push it to the bottom of 

 our mimic pool, it will rise unwetted to the surface. In a 

 few days each of the numerous " lives " within having put on 

 the shape of a grub or Larva, issues from the lower end of its 

 own flask-shaped egg, but the empty shells continuing still 

 attached, the boat remains a boat till reduced by weather to a 

 wreck. 



Here let us leave it, and follow the fortunes of one of the crew 

 after he has left his cabin, which he quits in rather a singular 

 manner, emerging through its bottom into the water. Happily, 

 however, he is born a swimmer and can take his pleasure in 

 his native element, poising himself near its surface head down- 



