A SEINE MAKER 137 



to a pupa. After a time he bursts the pupa skin, tears 

 down the bars at the door, and shoots hke an arrow to 

 the surface of the stream. In this upward course he 

 swims with his long legs and holds his wings folded 

 tightly upon his back. The instant he reaches the 

 surface the wings unfold like magic and bear him away 

 into a new and unknown medium. 



No more fundamental change of habit can be 

 imagined. This creature that has lived his whole life 

 beneath the surface of the water, clinging to perilous 

 brinks with his anchoring hooks, making and spreading 

 his nets on slippery, submerged rocks, suddenly in a 

 second changes to a true denizen of the air. For this 

 he is now equipped with soft, brown, leathery wings, 

 folded roof-like over his back ; and with long thread- 

 like antennae that continually touch all things within 

 their reach with delicate inquisitiveness ; and with long, 

 slender legs, stockinged in ornate hairs of which any 

 moth might be justly proud. 



His life in the air is short and sweet. Hiding him- 

 self during the garish day he comes out in the shadowy 

 night and seeks his mate. She may have been his 

 nearest neighbor at the bottom of the stream, but she 

 was nothing to him then. Now she is all there is of 

 life's happiness. As soon as he, after brief possession, 

 loses her, he seems to realize there is naught else worth 



