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IRatitre IRotes : 
Ube Selborne Society’s flbagaslne 
No. 194. FEBRUARY, 1906. Vol. XVII. 
A WINTER POND. 
VERY winter we keep a miniature pond in our study, 
and, as the materials are gathered from different 
districts year by year, these miniature ponds have 
never failed to interest and also to rouse in us wonder 
and admiration at the secrets they have disclosed. 
Last year, in the late autumn, we gathered a small quantity 
of jelly, which lay stranded just above the fringe of the water on 
the sandy banks of a shallow pool. For want of something 
better, we used a stiff envelope to lift up a little of the under- 
lying sand and the jelly intact, and, on reaching home, placed 
this in some fresh water together with a little well-washed 
Anacharis and duckweed taken from the same pond. This was 
the second week in October, and early in November we noticed 
that the water was swarming with microscopic creatures, which 
proved to be the larvae of the caddis fly. Minute as the creatures 
then were, they had ensconced themselves in dainty castles of 
beautiful and delicate mosaic work, made by cementing tiny 
grains of sand edge to edge. The little caddises had bright 
mahogany-coloured heads with enormous eyes, and their six 
legs, which, during locomotion, they protruded from the mouth 
of their castle, were covered with hooked bristles. 
Day by day we watched as they scrambled over the water- 
weed and fed on it, after the manner of ordinary caterpillars 
In the early stages, when not feeding, they amused themselves 
by clambering up the glass walls of the aquarium and tumbling 
down again. 
By January 12 their castles were about an eighth of an inch 
in length, and on that date we pounded up a small portion of 
nacre from a pearl-oyster shell and put it into the aquarium with 
the sand. The next day nearly every caddis case had a narrow 
rim of mother-of-pearl arranged round the wide end, and the 
addition gave a perfectly artistic touch to the whole. 
