WATER-LILIES 95 
crawl sleepily, daylight creatures, with the lus- 
tre buried in their milky bodies. More wholly 
children of night, the soft, luxurious Sphinxes 
(or hawk-moths) come not here; fine ladies of 
the insect world, their home is among gardens 
and greenhouses, late and languid by day, but 
all night long upon the wing, dancing in the 
air with unwearied muscles till long past mid- 
night, and supping on honey at last. They 
come not ; but the nobler butterflies soar above 
us, stoop a moment to the water, and then with 
a few lazy wavings of their sumptuous wings 
float far over the oak-trees to the woods they 
love. 
All these hover near the water-lily ; but its 
special parasites are an enamelled beetle (Dona- 
cia metallica) which keeps house permanently 
in the flower, and a few smaller ones which 
tenant the surface of the leaves, —larva, pupa, 
and perfect insect, forty feeding like one, and 
each leading its whole earthly career on this 
floating island of perishable verdure. The 
“beautiful blue damsel-flies ” alight also in mul- 
titudes among them, so fearless that they perch 
with equal readiness on our boat or paddle, and | 
so various that two adjacent ponds will some- ' 
times be haunted by two distinct sets of species. 
In the water, among the leaves, little shining 
whirlwigs wheel round and round, fifty joining ' 
