234 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



their cradles. Then the larvae creep forth, wash themselves 

 in the water, and hungrily fall upon their prey of still 

 smaller fry. The beautiful tracheal gills we feel inclined 

 to call them water-wings are spread out, and the air in 

 the water soaks into the blood with obviously invigorating 

 results. The larvae feed and grow and moult a clearly 

 logical sequence ; they cast their cuticles time after time ; 

 they hide from the fishes. 



At length there is the making of the wings and the 

 eventful emergence from the water. They cannot fly 

 much at first, for they are encumbered by a thin veil, 

 too truly suggestive of a shroud. They rest rather wearily 

 on the branches of the willows and on our clothes as we 

 stand watching them. We see them writhe and jerk, till 

 at length their last encumbrance, their " ghost " as some 

 entomologists have called it, is thrown off. Then the short 

 aerial life begins ; they swing to and fro as if in a dance ; 

 they dimple the smooth surface of the water with a touch 

 into smiling ; we see them chasing, embracing, separating. 

 There is great beauty in their film-like wings, in their large 

 lustrous eyes (of the males in particular), in the graceful 

 sweep of the long tail filaments. 



They never pause to eat, they could not if they would. 

 Hunger is past, love is just begun, and in the near future 

 is death. The evening shadows grow longer the shadow 

 of death is over the Ephemerides. The trout jump at 

 them, a few raindrops thin the throng, the stream bears 

 others away. The mothers lay their eggs in the water, 

 and after doing so many seem utterly spent, and die forth- 

 with. Here, as often elsewhere, reproduction is the be- 

 ginning of death, as well as of life. Cradle and tomb are 

 side by side. The males also pass, almost in a sigh, from 

 the climax of loving to the crisis of dying. Sometimes, as 

 the old entomologists said, not a single Ephemerid is left 



