Tra] AND SYMBOLS. 357 



bottom of the glass and hid itself in the filmy sediment which 

 had settled there. After a moment or two it was quite at home, 

 darting hither and thither in search of food too microscopic for 

 human eye to discover. It needed no tending. It fed, gam- 

 boled, and rested in safety. In a few days it had grown to 

 twice its length. There was also a strange enlargement towards 

 the upper part of its threadlike form. Its tail was furnished 

 with a fan-shaped fin, while two other fins, more delicate than 

 gossamer, developed themselves upon its head. Its motions 

 became more and more rapid, and, surprising to relate, its gravity 

 lessened as its dimensions increased. When an almost invisible 

 thread it had to swim to reach the surface of the water ; but 

 now that it measured a quarter of an inch in length, and had grown 

 strangely large about ts upper parts, it rose involuntarily to the 

 surface. The old predilection, however, for the darker regions 

 in the sediment at the bottom of the glass was still a ruling 

 principle, and its continual struggle was to dive down to those 

 filmy haunts. As long as it moved its little fins it succeeded, 

 but the moment it rested it began to rise towards the surface. 

 Each hour strengthened this new principle, and often would it 

 lodge beneath some fibre of the oak's threadlike root in order to 

 stay its upward course, until at last all power of resistance 

 was overcome, and it floated motionless upon the surface of the 

 water. A card cut to fit the glass served at once as a protection 

 to the seedling oak and as a cover to its companion. Upon the 

 next investigation the empty skin of the animalcule was seen 

 floating on the water. Where was its inmate 1 Nothing could 

 have destroyed it, and no exit from the glass was possible. A 

 further search was made, when lo, upon the side of the glass, 

 as high above its former element as it could go, was seen a 

 beautiful and full-sized insect, perfectly developed in all parts, 

 and ready, upon the opening of its prison-door, to fly away on 

 its wings of gossamer and dance in the glorious sunbeam. It 

 did appear wonderful that this exquisite form, so foreign to the 

 inhabitants of the water, should have emerged from the animal- 

 cule ; but though so transfigured, and so dissimilar in all its 

 modes of life, it was the same creature that once had shunned 

 the light, and had fondly clung to the fibres of the little oak 

 amid the darkness of its narrow prison. o. N. 



