180 SCRAP. 



insects are most abundant ; and we found that the 

 stone enclosures in these places could not be made 

 sufficiently close to keep in the grubs we lodged in 

 them : even the putting together a considerable 

 number of them, alone seemed to make them think 

 something was wrong ; and until their number was 

 reduced to about the ordinary figure, escape seemed 

 the only end in view with most of them. Some- 

 times, too, when we were on the tip-toe of expecta- 

 tion from noticing changes about to take place in 

 the vesture of some particular grub, a sudden rising 

 of the river swept both insects and enclosures away. 

 Loaches (or beardies) often also thinned our pre- 

 serves, and in this they were occasionally helped 

 by small eels. Whenever beardies got within an 

 enclosure containing only creepers and caddis worms, 

 in a very short space of time the beardies alone 

 were left, so rapacious are these small fishes. It is, 

 besides, a very difficult thing to distinguish one grub 

 from another of its kind, and whenever very few 

 were encircled they always disappeared. 



The " creeping things," and animalculse and grubs 

 fastened, like shell fish, to the river stones, are vastly 

 numerous, and in the winter season when no surface 

 food is within reach of the denizens of the deep, an 

 abundant supply of food is thus always procurable. 



