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If, spite of everything, the seawater fail, then try a fresh-water aquarium. Use your tank for the pond instead of the ocean; and in the spotted newt, the tortoise, the tadpole, the caddis-worm, and the thousand other inhabitants of our inland ponds and brooks, with the weeds among which they live, you will find as much entertainment as in watching the wonders of the great sea.
But this is a loose and unscientific way of speaking, for in fact it is not the individual that is re-born, but the character; which, even as the silkworm clothes itself with silk and the caddis-worm with mud and small shingle, creates for itself a new personality, congruous with its own nature.
"I found a caddis-worm, with a beautifully built house, in the roots of the Water-Soldier, and I'm going to look along the edge for some shells. We must have shell-fish, you know, to keep the aquarium clean. Oh!" "What is it, Molly? What have you found?" "Oh, such a lovely spider! A water-spider a scarlet spider. He's very small, but such a colour! Francis dear, may I keep him all to myself?
A change of diet was imperative, and, in seeking for this, he came into collision with the water-spider. Now, the water-spider lived by himself in a bubble of his own making. His legs were stout and long and hairy, his countenance was horrible, and his bite a thing to be avoided. When the newt first saw him he was devouring a caddis-worm. Vanity had been the worm's undoing.
"Ca'n't amuse it no more," Bruno answered, very dolefully, "'cause it won't say what it would like to do next! I've showed it all the duck-weeds and a live caddis-worm but it won't say nuffin! What would oo like? he shouted into the ear of the Frog: but the little creature sat quite still, and took no notice of him. "It's deaf, I think!" Bruno said, turning away with a sigh.
Just as I have seen a caddis-worm emancipating itself from its cage, half in as a worm, half out as a fly. Nature would seem to have specially favoured this little nook of France, which must have been the Eden of primeval man on Gallic soil.
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