104 OUT OF DOORS. 



repulsive and diabolical-looking creatures in existence. 

 It is a great, fat, brown grub, as long as your finger, 

 with a round, cruel-looking head, and a pair of huge 

 crooked jaws, like two sickle-blades set on the head. 

 Its voracity is wonderful. If you put one of these 

 grubs in a water-tank, and then a piece of meat into 

 the water, the grub seizes on it with its jaws, and keeps 

 its hold for hours at a time. Should two or three of 

 the water-beetle grubs be in the same vessel they will 

 seize upon the meat ; and if pushed with a stick will 

 revolve like a wheel, all their heads being fastened to 

 the meat, and all their tails radiating outwards. 



Now let us walk on towards that shady pool through 

 which our streamlet flows, and which has been deepened 

 and embanked, and set round with trees, and guarded 

 with stakes, to make it a fit drinking-place for the 

 cattle. Nothing for a time is perceptible in the water, 

 except those multitudinous little beings which are just 

 large enough to be visible to the naked eye, and which 

 are always playing through the water like motes in a 

 sunbeam. Presently a small ' pop ' is heard, a bubble 

 is seen breaking, and just below the spot where the 

 rippling circles arise, an indistinct gleam of orange and 

 scarlet is seen through the disturbed water. "Watch 

 the spot carefully, and presently the same waving, 

 orange may be seen coming up from below, and assum- 

 ing the form of a lizard-like reptile, some five inches 

 long, with four legs, a well-developed tail, flattened at 

 the sides to aid the creature in swimming a beautiful 



