FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 107 



its wings and flies to the bushes, trees, buildings or other object on the shore, and 

 alights with the body hanging downward. The males and females rise together, live 

 their short lives together, and die together. Soon after the flies rise from the water 

 they shed their skin. I do not refer to the larva? case, which is left on the water, but 

 to the membranous skin of the fly itself. This is as I described the process a few 

 years ago in Forest and Stream : 



"A few nights ago I was writing late, and in at the open window of my library 

 came a drake (May-fly), and settled on the sheet upon which I was writing. A few 

 moments after in came a spinner, with its long, slender legs, cylindrical, jointed body 

 and narrow wings, and after a tilt with the light dropped into my ink. If this was not 

 an invitation to get out fly-rod and fly-book and go a-fishing, what was it ? 



"The next morning I found on a wire window screen seven drakes, six of one 

 species and one of another. After breakfast I lighted a pipe and sat down inside the 

 screen to watch the May-flies outside. Six of the drakes had two stylets or ' whisks ' 

 each ; the other had three, and was a bit larger in body and wings. My daughter was 

 with me, and, her eyes being sharper than mine, she was the first to discover that the 

 skin on the back of one of the smaller drakes, near the head, had split. Then there 

 was an undulating motion of head and body, and first one and then another leg of the 

 insect was lifted as a man might do in pulling his legs out of the mud. The legs grew 

 longer and longer, and a reading glass showed me that they were being withdrawn 

 from an outer skin, as, to continue the simile, the man stuck in the mud would pull his 

 legs from his long boots. The outer skin seemed to adhere to the screen as if fastened 

 with a sticky substance. In a few moments the legs were clear of the outer skin, and 

 the drake rested. Then the undulations of the body began again. Before they had 

 been distinctly up and down. Now they were forward and back, or serpentine, as 

 though the body contracted and elongated. This movement was intensified to the 

 eye by the ringed body of the drake. The head was bending slowly backward 

 towards the extremity of the body, when suddenly the wings were drawn clear of the 

 outer skin. Another rest for a moment, and the brave little drake crawled forward a 

 trifle, leaving the filmy skin, even to the covering of the stylets, fast to the screen. 

 The drake, which had been dusty and gray, although just out of its larvse case, was 

 now bright and shining. Its veined wings were transparent and glossy, its ringed 

 body was polished, and altogether it was a neater and more trim little drake than 

 before throwing off or crawling from its outer skin." 



To transplant the May-fly, cardboard boxes should be provided, and inside the 

 boxes perches for the flies must be fixed. This can be done with a sail needle and 

 worsted, sewing through the cardboard from side to side, making the perches about 



two inches apart. As the flies are captured and placed in the boxes thev will promptly 



8 



