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Fancy was not satisfied with seals, they were not pretty and graceful enough for her, and she waited and watched for a real mermaid. On this day she took a breezy run with the beach-birds along the shore; she planted a pretty red weed in her garden; and let out the water-beetles and snails who had passed the night in her palace.
One of them, which was to have been taken in tow by the steam-vessels of the Crimean squadron, spread her wings, and sailed proudly by them all. Our iron water-beetles would send any of the old butterfly three-deckers to the bottom, as quickly as one of these would sink a Roman trireme.
Elsmere neither read nor reasoned. He spent his days in the school, in the village, pottering about the Mile End cottages, or the new institute sometimes fishing, sometimes passing long summer hours on the commons with his club boys, hunting the ponds for caddises, newts, and water-beetles, peering into the furze-bushes for second broods, or watching the sand-martins in the gravel-pits, and trudging home at night in the midst of an escort of enthusiasts, all of them with pockets as full and, miry as his own, to deposit the treasures of the day in the club-room.
They frequent, exclusively, mountain torrents in the northern hemisphere, and obtain their food entirely in the water, consisting, as it does, of water-beetles, caddis-worms, and other insect-larvae, as well as numerous small fresh-water shells.
A Princess was coming from Cleves, a Lutheran; the day-spring from on high was visiting them; soon, soon now, the axe and the flail should be given into their hands. In the dawn their boats could be seen pulling like water-beetles all across the pallid river from the Essex shores. They clustered in grey masses round the common steps.
The distant report of a gun sounded and a far-off roar of voices announced that the first race had started; straight-way the tumult subsided, and an expectant hush awaited the approach of the line of boats moving towards them like a row of furious water-beetles. The race drew nearer, and ship after ship of the line took up the deep-toned roar.
I should trip, for certain, when we were at it." Then the cob raised its dripping mouth, which it had kept with lips very close together, to act as a strainer to keep out tadpoles, water-beetles, leeches, or any other unpleasant creatures that might be in the water, took two or three steps back and aside, and then, noticing that there was a goodly patch of rich juicy herbage close by the spring, it lowered its head once more, uttered a snort as it blew the grass heavily, to drive off any flies that might be nestling among the strands, and began to crop, crop at the rich feed.
The zoologist is perhaps even more indebted to the invention. The habits, not only of the fishes, but of the mollusca, can be accurately studied under natural conditions, and many important facts of their history ascertained and illustrated. The water-beetles and other aquatic insects will also come in for a share of attention.
The tarsi of the front-legs are dilated in many male beetles, or are furnished with broad cushions of hairs; and in many genera of water-beetles they are armed with a round flat sucker, so that the male may adhere to the slippery body of the female.
In a few yards we were stopped by a channel of clear water, with tiny fish and water-beetles in it; and, looking round, saw that the whole lake was intersected with channels, so unlike anything which can be seen elsewhere, that it is not easy to describe them.
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