This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ... set them afloat? Can you guess what they are? Perhaps not, but little Mrs. Gnat could tell you, and if you understood her language, you might hear her shrill little voice in your ear--" Put that back, put it in the water again, quick! That's not a boat, it's my eggs, and they won't hatch if you take them away from the ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ... set them afloat? Can you guess what they are? Perhaps not, but little Mrs. Gnat could tell you, and if you understood her language, you might hear her shrill little voice in your ear--" Put that back, put it in the water again, quick! That's not a boat, it's my eggs, and they won't hatch if you take them away from the water. Don't touch my eggs!" Sure enough, the little boat is only a bunch of gnat's eggs, all glued together in this queer shape, and left floating on the water by the careful mother. You may think it a queer way for her to take care of them, but she knows what they need better than you or I do, and is doing just the right thing for them when she launches the little boats on the stream. new body out of the old skin. I say at the risk of his life, for it is a dangerous operation for him. After he leaves his old shape he cannot live in the water, and - should the skin tip over before he has freed himself entirely from it, it would carry him down, to be drowned in the old home where he once swam so easily, and perhaps be snapped up by a hungry dragon-grub. This often happens; but if he meets with no such accident, he soon dries his tiny wings, and darts away to join the swarms of " midges," or "no-see-'ems," as the Indians called them; and of his right to this name he will soon convince us by his invisible attacks. They float safely over the ripples for a while, and when the little gnats hatch out, in the form of tiny grubs, they swim about as freely as the fishes; but they are not fitted, like them, for breathing in the water. They need air as much as you do; and how do you suppose they get it while they live in the brook? Well, when a diver goes beneath the waves, he puts on a rubber suit to which is fastened...
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