XVIII. 



HOBBLEDEHOYS. 



P\URING the monsoon in the Himalayas there comes at 

 rare intervals a perfect afternoon a superb hundred 

 minutes before twilight, when the rain has ceased and the 

 slanting rays of the sun have lost their noonday fierceness ; 

 when the fragrant verdure of grass and foliage is such that 

 the scene might be Scotland and the time early June ; when 

 the air is at that ideal temperature alas ! so seldom met 

 with which is purely pleasurable to the senses of one re- 

 posing in the open. It was on such a day that I chanced 

 to come upon one of those little burns so few and far be- 

 tween in the arid Himalayas. The stream was but a gentle 

 trickle of water, yet its soft splash was soothing to the ear, 

 so I sat me down beside one of the tiny shallow pools 

 through which the rivulet passed in its downward course. 



Every piece of water, larger than a mere puddle, contains 

 a little world of living beings, and even the ephemeral 

 puddle is not without its vital organisms. The area of the 

 pool by which I rested was less than four square yards, yet 

 it displayed quite a considerable aquatic population, com- 

 posed chiefly of water-insects and tadpoles. The former 

 frolicked about in the pellucid liquid, heedless of the frog 

 larvas that were nibbling at the soft green algag which 

 formed the velvet carpet of the miniature lake, for tadpoles 

 are vegetarians until they lose the tail ; with the disappear- 

 ance of this appendage they put away childish things and 

 become beasts of prey. There must have been forty or 

 fifty tadpoles in that small area. They were in all stages 

 of development. Some were all head and tail. In others 

 tiny hind limbs had budded forth. A few had attained the 



