THE DADDY 221 



in his emergence. Rooks, starlings, martins, and swal 

 lows have gorged themselves, but made no apparent 

 difference in the numbers of the host. They move over 

 common and field with a gait that hovers between walking 

 and flying, like the passage of domestic geese in a hurry. 

 The long awkward-looking legs that are lost with as 

 little care as the points of a starfish or the tail of a slow- 

 worm are as useful, at any rate to the existence of the 

 species, as the legs of a heron or an ibis. They act as 

 stilts over rough country, and enable the fly to choose a 

 congenial pitch for depositing its eggs at the roots of the 

 grasses, as the mayfly, more trustingly, let theirs fall on 

 the surface of the stream. In both cases perhaps gravity 

 helps a little to reach the desired nest. Some insects 

 ensure survival by a number of devices for bridging the 

 deadly winter months. They &quot; hiberniate,&quot; as a labour 

 ing friend says, in the fully developed form, like the tor 

 toise-shell butterfly, or hang up well-protected cocoons 

 or lay eggs that are yet more solidly proof against cold 

 than the chrysalis. The daddy-long-legs puts all her 

 eggs in one basket and justifies the policy. No insect 

 more surely survives. It shares its method and success 

 with the cockchafer. Most of us who are not ashamed 

 to dig are peculiarly familiar with two uncomely denizens 

 of the top spit. One is a soft whitish and peculiarly gross 

 grub which will live for several years steadily munching 

 in one narrow place the roots of available grasses till it 

 is ready to transform itself into the complicated missile 

 known as the cockchafer. The other familiar and hardly 

 less gross grub is the leather-jacket, for in this form, too, 

 the animal has earned a racy rural nickname ; and he 

 behaves very much as the nameless cockchafer grub ; 

 the fly and the beetle have something in common. You 

 may find scarcely credible numbers if you happen to be 



