GENERAL DESCRIPTION 



ship, soothes the sullen moods of hermits, and makes 

 good comrades of us all. It is associated with nature 

 in her most winsome phases, and none can cultivate 

 its acquaintance without becoming the better man. 

 With a good supper at hand in a rustic camp, after a 

 tiresome day, orisons and benisons rise spontaneously. 



Insects as Food. 



Oh, leafy June I animate with countless insect forms! 

 Beneath each maturing leaf bursts the opening chrysa- 

 lis. Upon the flux of the eddy floats the empty cad- 

 dis boats, their whilom tenants already translated to 

 the upper ether. Fleets of gnat-rafts, tossed about and 

 broken up by the tumbling foam of the cascades re- 

 lease the myriads of inexorable midgets, which pursue 

 the angler through the summer months and vex his 

 waking hours. Gaunt mosquitoes wriggle out of their 

 swaddling clothes to pipe their resurrection-song and 

 range afar in quest of blood. Wherever we turn, 

 whether on land or water, under this decaying leaf or in 

 that rotten log, in the folds of the alder leaves, trees, 

 and willows which overhang the streams, among the 

 succulent weeds which carpet the ponds and river-bot- 

 toms, within the mosses which cling to the trees, and 

 in the corrugated bark wherever it grows, we shall 

 find in this month of June an infinite variety of beetles, 

 flies, moths, grubs, larvie, aphides, worms, chrysalides, 

 etc., which comprise the main food supply of the brook- 

 trout and his congeners of lake and river. Insects 

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