United States or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Already, over the first emerald of the grass, the dandelion was showing yellow, and the red-pink anemone was hanging its tender head; while the surface of every pond was a swarm of dancing gnats and midges, and the water-spider was being joined in their pursuit by birds which gathered from every quarter to the vantage-ground of the dry reeds.
There they took a "water-spider," six hundred feet long by three hundred in width, the deck of which was one hundred feet above the surface, which carried them over the water at the rate of a mile a minute, around the eastern end of Cuba, through Windward Passage, and so to the South American mainland, where they continued their journey by rail.
On Buffalo River I saw a boatman or water-spider seize, and devour a mosquito that fell within reach; which is encouraging, because, as a rule, the smaller the foe, the deadlier, and the only creature that really affects the whole mosquito nation is apparently a small red parasite that became more and more numerous as the season wore on.
Creek after creek was passed and the boat crept on slowly like a monstrous water-spider with a big body and eight slender legs. . . . Did you follow with your ghostly eyes the quest of this obscure adventurer of yesterday, you shades of forgotten adventurers who, in leather jerkins and sweating under steel helmets, attacked with long rapiers the palisades of the strange heathen, or, musket on shoulder and match in cock, guarded timber blockhouses built upon the banks of rivers that command good trade?
The water is its natural enemy, and we shall see the direction." And, even as he spoke, a thin line like the track of a water-spider, shot swiftly across the shiny surface; there was a ghost of steam in the air above; and immediately I became aware of an odour of burning. Dr. Silence turned and shot a glance at me that made me think of lightning. I began to shake all over.
Abe Tutts, of the Flour and Feed Store, skimmed the floor with the darting ease of a water-spider dragging beside him his far less active wife, a belligerent-appearing and somewhat hard-featured lady several years his senior.
"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?
It was deep below me; a little above were clear shallows, where the water-spider pursued its toil of no result, and cast upon the yellow sand beneath a shadow that was not a shadow, but, refracted from the broken surface, spots of glittering light, clustered like the diamonds of a brooch, separate, yet linked, and tremulously bright.
If the bee comprehended the problem which it has been working out for these many ages before man was able to solve it, would its intellectual powers be inferior to his in degree, if they were the same in kind? The water-spider weaves for herself a cocoon, makes it impervious to water, and fastens it by loose threads to the leaves of plants growing at the bottom of a still pool.
Then a speck would break away from the anchored craft and with the movement of a water-spider land the fishermen ashore. None of these things interested her. She could not have told whether the sun shone or whether the sky was fair or dull. Neither was she lonely, nor did she miss Max.
Word Of The Day