THE DRAGON FLY, 203 



plation on the banks, or in the waters of a river ; but 

 they are few as compared with the whole catalogue ; 

 and he who would hope to linger by the margin till 

 he had exhausted the whole of its natural history, 

 would be as sure of disappointment as the clown, in 

 Horace, who sat down on the bank to wait until the 

 stream should run dry. The information and the 

 flood are equally perennial ; and the one is as re- 

 freshing and fertilizing to the mind, as the other is 

 to that accumulated abundance of life of which it is 

 the parent and the support. 



