2o8 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



lose its immortality, and the spry rotifer will fall a 

 victim to the infinitesimal fine bright arrows of the 

 chase* A strange quarry for men whose palaeolithic 

 progenitors hunted the woolly mastodon and many- 

 horned rhinoceros and sabre-toothed tiger ! 



That sad day of very small things for the sports- 

 man is, however, not near, nor within measurable 

 distance ; or, so it seemed to me when, an hour 

 ago, I strolled round the garden, curiously peering 

 into every shrub, to find the visible and compara- 

 tively noble insect-life in great abundance* Beetles 

 were there hard, round, polished, and of various 

 colours, like sea-worn pebbles on the beach ; and 

 some, called lady-birds in the vernacular, were 

 bound, like the books that Chaucer loved, in black 

 and red* And the small gilded fly, not less an insect 

 light-headed, a votary of vain delights, than in the 

 prehistoric days when a white-headed old king, 

 discrowned and erased, railed against sweet Nature's 

 liberty* And ever waiting to welcome this inconstant 

 lover (with falces) there sits the solitary geometric 

 spider, an image and embodiment of patience, not 

 on a monument, but a suspended wheel of which 

 he is himself the hub ; and so delicately fashioned 

 are the silver spokes thereof, radiating from his 

 round and gem-like body, and the rings, concentric 

 tire within tire, that its exceeding fineness, like swift 

 revolving motion, renders it almost invisible* Cater- 



