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The May-flies must surely be the lotus-eaters of the ephemerae the happiest, laziest, carelessest fly that dances and dreams out his few hours of sunshiny life by English rivers.
This resolution he intimated with a yawn, resistless as that of the Goddess in the Dunciad, which was responsively echoed by his giant sons, as they dispersed in quest of the pastimes to which their minds severally inclined them Percie to discuss a pot of March beer with the steward in the buttery, Thorncliff to cut a pair of cudgels, and fix them in their wicker hilts, John to dress May-flies, Dickon to play at pitch and toss by himself, his right hand against his left, and Wilfred to bite his thumbs and hum himself into a slumber which should last till dinner-time, if possible.
Angel and I were equipped with proper rods baited with greenish May-flies, and The Seraph got a willow wand and line at the end of which dangled an active grasshopper. "You know," said the Bishop, when we had cast our flies, "if I were a whole-hearted angler, I should not have brought three such restless spirits on this expedition but truly I am 'No fisher, But a well-wisher To the game!
Thus our Thames May-flies had gigantic prehistoric ancestors, which appeared on earth, possibly with their present associates the caddis flies, at an enormously remote age. So far no butterfly had yet appeared on earth, though the Ephemerinae might dance over the still lagoons and swamps.
There was a report that the rare yellow bog-bean grew in a meadow about a mile and a half up the river, and thither he was bound, extremely enjoying the summer evening walk, as the fresh dewy coolness sunk on all around, and the noises of the town were mellowed by distance, and the sun's last beams slanted on the green meadows, and the May-flies danced, and dragon-flies darted, and fish rose or leaped high in the air, or showed their spotted sides, and opened and shut their gills, as they rested in the clear water, and the evening breeze rustled in the tall reeds, and brought fragrance from the fresh-mown hay.
Downwards it fleeted ever, and bore his thoughts floating on its oily stream; and the great trout, with their yellow sides and peacock backs, lounged among the eddies, and the silver grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the reeds; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone; the kingfisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' bills snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swift's wings whirred like musket-balls, as they rushed screaming past his head; and ever the river fleeted by, bearing his eyes away down the current, till its wild eddies began to glow with crimson beneath the setting sun.
One sighs, remembering that it is even so, that life passes, sunrise after sunrise, moonlight upon moonlight, evening upon evening, and we like May-flies on the surface of a stream, no more than they for all our poets and priests. The clock struck seven, reminding me of the dinner-hour, reminding me that I should have to dine alone that evening.
This bird was hunted from every spot he chose to alight on; no sooner did he enter the garden than one of the stronger birds flew at him 'so misery is trodden on by many. There was a drone-fly on a sunny wall on January 20, the commonest of flies in summer, quite a wonder then; the same day a house-sparrow was trying to sing, for they have a song as well as a chirp; on January 22 a tit was sharpening his saw and the gnats were jumping up and down in crowds this up-and-down motion seems peculiar to them and may-flies.
Thus the May-flies and beetles are perhaps older than the Thames shells, and older than the prehistoric plants on which the river molluscs feed. Secretary of the Entomological Society, and an accomplished botanist. The work is entitled "The Geological Antiquity of Insects," and published by Gurney and Jackson, London. Fond as the butterflies are of the light and sun, they dearly love their beds.
Donkia glaciers Moraines Dome of ice Honey-combed surface Rocks of Donkia Metamorphic action of granite veins Accident to instruments Sebolah pass Bees, and May-flies View Temperature Pulses of party Lamas and travellers at Momay Weather and climate Dr.
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