kilful dancers practising their "figures" for
the first time. They, however, are not engaged in mere amusement, but,
like the water-gnats, are absorbed in the business of life. The
naturalist knows, when he sees these creatures, that they do not form
the hundredth part of those which are hidden from human eyes below the
surface of the little brook, and that the whole of the stream is as
instinct with life, as if it had been haunted by the Nipens, the
Undines, and the host of fairy beings with whom the old legends peopled
every river and its tributaries.

They are just as wonderful, though clad in material forms, as any water
spirit that ever was evolved from the poet's brain, and have the
inestimable merit of being always within reach whenever we need them.

I will venture to assert that no fairy tales, not even excepting those
of the "Arabian Nights," can surpass in marvel the true life-history of
the mayfly, the frog, the newt, and the dragon-fly, as will be narrated
in the course of these pages. I may go even farther, and assert that
there is no inhabitant of the brook and its banks whose biography and
structure are not full of absorbing interest, and will not occupy the
longest life, if only an attempt be made to study them thoroughly.

An almost typical example of slow-flowing brooks is to be found in the
remarkable channels which intersect the country between Minster and
Sandwich, and which, on the ordnance map, look almost like the threads
of a spider's web. In that flat district, the fields are not divided by
hedges, as in most parts of England, or by stone walls--"dykes," as they
are termed in Ireland--such as are employed in Derbyshire and several
other stony localities, but by channels, which have a strong
individuality of their own.

Even the smallest of these brooks is influenced by the tide, so that at
the two periods of slack water there is no perceptible stream.

Yesterday afternoon, having an hour or so to spare at Minster, I
examined slightly several of these streams and their banks. The contrast
between them and the corresponding brooklets of Oxford, also a low-lying
district, was very strongly marked.

In the first place, the willow, which forms so characteristic an
ornament of the brooks and rivers of Oxford, is wholly absent. Most of
the streamlets are entirely destitute of even a bush by which their
course can be marked; so that when, as is often the case, a heavy white
fog overhangs the ent