CREEPER AND STONE-FLY FISHING. 47 



CHAPTER III. 

 CREEPER AND STONE-FLY FISHING. 



THE creeper is the larva, of the stone-fly, which, as every 

 trout fisher in Yorkshire knows, is aquatic in its origin, 

 All aquatic insects have four stages : the egg, the larva, 

 the pupa, and the imago, or perfect state. The business 

 of the larva is to eat ; this it does, practically until it 

 bursts, and assumes the pupa state, and the process is 

 repeated until the insect reaches the imago. It has then 

 six legs, and ceases to grow, its sole remaining business 

 being that of reproduction. In the larval and pupal 

 stages of the stone-flies, which form a branch of the order 

 Neuroptera about which scientific men complain that less is 

 known than about any other class of insects, they live in the 

 water, and after they have attained their perfect condition, 

 they remain near the water in which they were reared, and 

 never travel to any distance from their birth-place, their 

 powers of flight being limited. The male is altogether an 

 inferior insect to the female, his wings being much shorter, 

 and his size, as a rule, only one-third that of his wife. The 

 female carries her eggs about with her for some time before 

 they are laid. They are united together under the abdo- 

 men in a small black bundle, which gives the insect a very 

 heavy and cumbrous appearance in its short laboured flights. 

 But as if to add another instance of the wonderful order 

 in Nature's works, this bundle seen under a microscope 

 exhibits several hundreds of eggs fastened together in 



