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Even in December and January there are a few small gnats or water-flies on the water in the middle of the day, in bright days, or when there is sunshine. These are generally black, and they escape the influence of the frost by the effects of light on their black bodies, and probably by the extreme rapidity of the motions of their fluids, and generally of their organs.
There, under the genial light of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged fly emerge, to buzz over the water as a fawn-coloured Caperer deadliest of trout flies; if she be not snapped up beforehand under water by some spotted monarch in search of supper. But look again among this tangled mass of weed. Here are more larvae of water-flies.
Walter Pater wrote criticism that is beautiful literature. If Ruskin missed Whistler, he is in good company, for Sainte-Beuve, the prince of critics, missed Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and to Victor Hugo was unfair. Yet, consider the Osrics embalmed in the amber of Sainte-Beuve's style. He, like many another critic, was superior to his subject. And that is always fatal to the water-flies.
I said just now, that happy was the sportsman who was also a naturalist. And, having once mentioned these curious water-flies, I cannot help going a little farther, and saying, that lucky is the fisherman who is also a naturalist. A fair scientific knowledge of the flies which he imitates, and of their habits, would often ensure him sport, while other men are going home with empty creels.
Rather a ditch in Egypt Be gentle grave unto me! rather on Nilus' mud Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies Blow me into abhorring! rather make My country's high pyramides my gibbet, And hang me up in chains! She asks Dolabella what Caesar means to do with her, and when she learns that she is to be taken to Rome she recurs to the horror of the triumph. 'Now, Iras, what think'st thou?
Yet this bold, independent, really great man, so shrewdly strong in his own attitude toward these gilded water-flies, was weak enough to rear his own son to be one of them, to value the baubles they valued, to view men and things through their painted spectacles and thus to come to grief. Two years after Johnson Hall was built, Mr.
Doltaire had no burning love for France, and little faith in anything; for he was of those Versailles water-flies who recked not if the world blackened to cinders when their lights went out. As will be seen by-and-bye, he had come here to seek me, and to serve the Grande Marquise.
Below the mill-dam it hurried down a pretty steep declivity, dodging its channel from side to side, but always undercutting the bank on one side, while on the other it left miniature creeks or shoals and spits where the minnows played and the water-flies dried their wings on the warm pebbles; always, save that twice or thrice before finding its outlet it paused below one of these pebbly spits to widen and deepen itself into a pool where it was odds that the sun, slanting through the bushes, showed a brown trout lurking.
They are found only at the surface of the water, where the temperature must be above the freezing point. In February a few double-winged water-flies, which swim down the stream, are usually found in the middle of the day, such as the willow-fly; and the cow-dung-fly is sometimes carried on the water by winds. In March there are several flies found on most rivers.
Are there not water-rats, water-flies, water-crickets, water-crabs, water-tortoises, water-scorpions, water-tigers and water-hogs, water-cats and water-dogs, sea-lions and sea-bears, sea-horses and sea-elephants, sea-mice and sea- urchins, sea-razors and sea-pens, sea-combs and sea-fans; and of plants, are there not water-grass, and water-crowfoot, water- milfoil, and so on, without end?
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