The Naturalist on the Thames | Page 9

the plants in the water garden that floats below the boat, or weaving nests, tending eggs, or undergoing the most astonishing transitions of form and activity, on or below the surface. Many of them are perhaps better equipped for encountering all the chances of existence than any other creatures. They can swim, dive, and run below water, live on dry land, or fly in the air, and many are so hardy as to be almost proof against any degree of cold. The great carnivorous water-beetle, the dytiscus, after catching and eating other creatures all day, with two-minute intervals to come up, poke the tips of its wings out of the water and jam some air against its spiracles, before descending once more to its subaqueous hunting-grounds, will rise by night from the surface of the Thames, lift again those horny wing-cases, unfold a broad and beautiful pair of gauzy wings, and whirl off on a visit of love and adventure to some distant pond, on to which it descends like a bullet from the air above. When people are sitting in a greenhouse at night with no lamp lighted, talking or smoking, they sometimes hear a smash as if a pebble had been dropped on the glass from above. It is a dytiscus beetle, whose compound eyes have mistaken the shine of the glass in the moonlight for the gleam of a pond. At night some of the whirligig beetles, the shiny, bean-like creatures seen whirling in incessant circles in corners by the bank, make a quite audible and almost musical sound upon the water. The activity of many of the water insects is astonishing. Besides keeping in almost incessant motion, those which spend most of their time below water have generally to come up constantly to breathe. Such are the water-bugs, water-scorpions and stick insects, which, though slender as rushes, and with limbs like hairs, can catch and kill the fry of the smaller fishes. Most of these are like divers, who have to provide themselves with air to breathe, and work at double speed in addition.
If a group of whirligig beetles is disturbed, the whole party will dive like dabchicks, rising to the surface again when they feel the need for breathing-air again. The diving-bell spiders, which do not often frequent the main Thames stream, though they are commonly found in the ditches near it, gather air to use just as a soldier might draw water and dispose it about his person in water-bottles. They do this in two ways, one of which is characteristic of many of the creatures which live both in and out of the water as the spider does. The tail of the spider is covered with black, velvety hair. Putting its tail out of the water, it collects much air in the interstices of the velvet. It then descends, when all this air, drawn down beneath the surface, collects into a single bubble, covering its tail and breathing holes like a coat of quicksilver. This supply the spider uses up when at work below, until it dwindles to a single speck, when it once more ascends and collects a fresh store. The writer has seen one of these spiders spin so many webs across the stems of water plants in a limited space that not only the small water-shrimps and larvae, but even a young fish were entangled. The other and more artistic means of gathering air employed by the spider is to catch a bubble on the surface and swim down below with it. The bubble is then let go into a bell woven under some plant, into which many other bubbles have been drawn. In this diving-bell the eggs are laid and the young hatched, under the constant watch of the old spider. Few people care to take the trouble to gaze for any time into a shallow, still piece of water, in which the bottom is plainly discernible, and a crop of water-weeds makes a wall on either side of some central "well." If they do find some such pond near the Thames banks or a shallow backwater, they may see after a few minutes much that is new and suggestive of strange activities. Everything will be quiet and motionless at first, for water beasts are very suspicious of movement above them, and all sham dead, or lie quite still, and are strangely invisible. On the other hand, they have none of the power of remaining motionless for half-an-hour like land animals. Soon what look like sticks, but are caddis larva, begin to creep on the bottom. Then more brown objects, larvae of dragon-flies and water-beetles, detach themselves from the stems of the plants and cruise up and down seeking what they may devour. Other creatures feeding and swimming among