3o8 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- 

 homed 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 crazed, railed against sweet Nature's 

 liberty. And ever waiting to welcome this inconstant 

 lover (with fakes) 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- 



