114 WATER INSECTS. 



objects, and these whimsically displaced as well as inverted a 

 swallow appearing ever and anon to dip its wing in the clouds 

 or foliage, while here and there a fish seemed leaping from the 

 sky. An eye yet more attentive might also have discerned that 

 the surface of the water was traversed by a multitude of queer 

 dark little Insects, with straight lanky bodies and angular limbs, 

 gliding about in all directions. Skimming the glassy mirror 

 like these, but in shape their very antipodes, were certain other 

 little active bodies, oval and convex as an egg, bluish-black, 

 and polished as a steel corslet ; now collected in groups, 

 appearing by twos and threes to embrace each other, then 

 starting off singly as if pricked by contact ; now motionless, 

 then whirling swiftly round and round, seeming absolutely 

 tipsy with their native element, or giddy with the joy of exist- 

 ence. Other creatures of curious boat-like form, almost thrice 

 as big as the last, were cutting the water with their oars : these 

 also looked as if they had drunk, but three times deeper, of an 

 intoxicating draught ; for oblivious apparently of the important 

 distinction between head and heels, with the latter upwards and 

 the former immersed, they now hung as it were suspended 

 in the water, then darted off with the celerity of a six-oared 

 cutter. All these living objects, as they met the eye, were 

 in perfect harmony with the surrounding scene of peace. 

 What then could we discern amiss in the pond and its joyous 

 occupants ? 



We knew that the Insect world of waters was emphatically 

 a world of destructiveness, and that each of the above described 

 creatures, wheeling about so merrily on the pond's surface, 

 was in pursuit, indeed, of pleasure but of pleasure derived 

 chiefly from the chase of living prey, or the cannibal delight 

 of devouring it. Neither on the surface only, but down to its 

 lowest depths, the pond was teeming with a carnivorous multi- 

 tude : some (for Insects) of prodigious size, and of uncouth 

 and frightful shapes ; others of almost invisible minuteness, 

 but all alike busy and happy in cutting off the happiness of 



