NATURE STUDY. 
156 
breathing apparatus on the outside of their bodies. And 
often one will find a six-legged creature that is more gro¬ 
tesque than graceful, squatting on the mud of the bottom, 
or buried in it, or clinging to some reed or water-bush. It 
will be a beautiful dragon-fly some day, if it escapes its 
many enemies ; but the only promise it now gives of so 
great a change in its appearance and habits is in the little 
wing-pads on its back. Sometimes, particularly in spring 
and early summer, we may see these beginnings of wings 
on the stone-fly and may-fly nymphs as well, when we have 
learned to look for them. Besides these, there are active, 
wriggling creatures, with stout jaws, and with three pairs 
of true legs on the three segments of the body nearest the 
head, and with never more than five pairs of short, un- 
jointed “pro-legs” on the under side of the abdomen. 
These are the larvae or young of water beetles—of the 
whirligigs, and the-water scavenger beetles, and of the 
big and little members of the Dytiscus family ; and with 
them are many other queer, squirming things—each of 
them the young of some insect or other creature, and of so 
many kinds that years of patient study will scarcely suf¬ 
fice for us to learn about them all, or even to call them by 
their names. 
But the queerest and most uncanny of all the queer and 
uncanny multitude are the sticks, and little cob-houses, 
and tiny stone-cases that seem to be alive, and which do 
move about, with funny jerks, in an uncertain sort of way, 
at the bottom of the brook or pond. In each of these queer 
houses is the young of a caddis-fly. Sometime, if it can 
avoid being eaten up, it will be a graceful insect, with a 
slender body, long legs and antennae, or “feelers,” and 
four brown wings. But they were hatched from eggs that 
their mothers placed in the water, and they must stay 
there, until they grow up, right among the fishes and the 
many other creatures that would be glad to eat them. So 
