NOVEMBER 281 



straw-yard, the plover on the moor, exercise both legs 

 and eyes from the first. The common Mayfly 

 {Ephemera domica) spends three years as an unlovely 

 larva, living in mud, swallowing mud, and matching 

 the mud in colour. At the end of this obscure, not to 

 say obscene, period of probation, after passing through 

 several trivial, yet critical, phases, it suddenly appears 

 as a delicate, exquisitely graceful winged creature, 

 endowed with magnificent power of flight, which it 

 puts to immediate use without the preliminary of 

 a trial trip. It baffles all our sense of purpose to 

 understand why aU the tedious and ignoble years 

 of preparation should not be the preface to prolonged 

 exercise of the perfected faculties. The pathetic truth 

 is that the Mayfly seldom survives a second or third 

 sunrise after becoming a perfect insect. Flight, love, 

 reproduction, and death — all are enacted within the 

 space of a few hours. The surface of the water will be 

 thickly strewn with the wreckage of the pretty 

 creatures that rose from its depths but yesterday ; for 

 eleven months to come it may be that not a single 

 Mayfly will dance in the glade that was so lately dim 

 with a mist of them. 



Seeing, then, how irregular is the period that elapses 

 between the birth of animals and their attaining con- 

 trol of the motor faculties, it may be understood that 

 similar uncertainty must surround the question how 

 soon the brain, or its equivalent in the lowest grades, 

 supplies any creature with consciousness or intelligence. 

 From the precocity of instinctive activities, such as 

 was exhibited by Mr, Hudson's young jacana, there 



