THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



237 



in diameter. This must- have a bag attached 

 to it, made of net. such as cap and bonnet 

 shapes are made of, and the whole must be 

 made so that it can be attached to a walking- 

 stick. The best arrangement fur the wire 

 will be something of this sort— 



L ! 

 A A 



Fig. 60. 



a hole is bored through the stick a short dis- 

 tance from the end to receive the two elbows 

 a, a, the two pieces b, b, laying along two 

 grooves, and a tin ferrule made to slip over 

 the whole to hold them firmly in position. 

 Another instrument must be a piece of strong 

 wire, bent into this shape — 



Fig. 6i. 



and a long piece of strong twine secured by 

 one end at a. This we will call the weed 

 hook. Don't forget to put in your satchel 

 some sandwich, hard boiled egg, and dry 

 toast, or something of a similar nature, the 

 uses of which I will not trouble you to 

 describe ; also remember your note-book, a 

 thing a naturalist should never be without. 

 Now I think we seem as if we had got all, 

 and the next thing to do is, if we are in a 

 town to get out of it as quickly as we can, so 

 we had better go to the railway station and 

 take a ticket for four or five miles in any 

 direction you please. The best places are 



the flat parts of the country, where there are 

 plenty of stagnant pools and slow ditches, 

 mountainous d istricts with rapid torrents will 

 not furnish much in our line. Well, having 

 made choice of our place we must loose no 

 time in getting there, and having arrived we 

 take the first rustic lane we come across. 

 At the end of the lane we come upon a stag- 

 nant pond of water, with patches of green 

 floating upon the surface, what is generally 

 called a " horse p-snd," this is just what we 

 want, and we must make up our minds to 

 have a thorough hunt in it. First, let us 

 have a walk round the edge to see if we can 

 find any snail shells adhering to the stones, 

 and while we are doing this Nelly will be 

 filling the bottles about three parts full of 

 water, ready to receive our captures. Several 

 kinds of shells may be found in such situa- 

 tions, one of the common is Li mn in stagitalis : 

 another is the trumpet snail (Plmorbis), and 

 a third is called Paludina, but is not so com- 

 mon as the two last. 



Stop ! there goes something in the middle 

 of the pond. O, it is a newt, out with the 

 net, and catch it by all means. It is the 

 large crested newt (Triton cvistatus ), place it 

 at once in one of the bottles. The rock-work 

 in the aquarium must be built up above the 

 top of the water, as he will want to spend a 

 portion of his time upon it. There are other 

 kinds of newts, but this is the largest, the 

 male during the breeding season has a kind 

 of crest along the back, and the belly is 

 golden. He is a beautiful creature, and if 

 you treat him well he will come out upon the 

 rock above the water in an evening, and sing 

 for you. Look again, there is a very fero- 

 cious creature, with two large jaws, he is 

 crawling among that weed, put in the net 

 again, and bring him out, it is the larva of 

 the Plunger Beetle, and although a very 

 interesting creature he will not do for your 

 aquarium, for he will eat up all before him 

 in the shape of animal life, so give him a 

 small bottle to himself, and when you get 

 home you can keep him in a glass jar, and 



