“Thus,” says Büchner, “everywhere in nature are battle, craft, and ingenuity, all following the merciless law of egoism, in order to maintain their own lives and to destroy those of others.” In man, indeed, there is some counterpoise to all this in the mind and façon de parler; but the lower animals do not think so much, and, having no proper language, cannot even talk altruistically.
Lastly, we have the water-spider, whose little spun nest, against the submerged stem of some aquatic plant, is open at the bottom like a diving-bell, and filled with air which its owner carries down from the surface in successive bubbles, each one looking “like a globe of quicksilver.” To collect them she swims on her back, and, in some manner, entangles them amongst the numerous hairs with which her abdomen is covered, where they cling safely all through the journey,
“Proud of that delicate lodgment.”
There may be other bubbles as pretty, perhaps, but few, by bursting, do such good to those who have cherished them. In winter, it would seem, the spider closes the entrance to the diving-bell, and sleeps, dry and soft, in a well-aired bed, in spite of the damp situation.
CHAPTER XXIV
Aquatic insects—Lyonnet’s water-beetle—A floating cradle—Larva and pupa—An ingenious contrivance—Nothing useless—The imaginary philosopher—How the cradle is made—The mysterious “mast”—Later observation—The giant water-bug—An oppressed husband.
SPIDERS having brought us to the water, it may be as well, or even better, in view of the title of this work, to say something about water-insects. Of these, so long as the water be fresh, and not salt, there are many, and the largest, perhaps, if he exceeds some of the dragon-fly larvæ and the Giant Water-Bug of America, must be the Great Water-Beetle—Hydrophilus piceus—which is larger even than the much commoner one—Dytiscus—which everybody knows, and which is the water-beetle to most people.
It is the fate of some animals to become associated for all time in our minds with the name of some particular man, as, for instance, the bee is with that of Huber, and the ephemera with that of Swammerdam. Again, the fame of Lyonnet, though he was skilled in eight languages, and became cypher secretary and confidential translator to the United Provinces of Holland, is principally bound up with a certain caterpillar, viz. that of the goat moth, of which creature, though only an amateur in such matters, he made dissections and executed plates, which have never yet been surpassed, and are supposed to be entirely unsurpassable. In a lesser degree his memory is associated with this particular water-beetle—the great one, into the heart of whose mystery he was the first to pierce: “In the beginning of July,” he tells us, “I had noticed in the ditches a kind of cocoon which I did not recognise. It was whitish, of the size of the end of the finger, nearly spherical, but rather oval and flattened. The surface, which looked like tow, was not quite smooth. One of the two ends was flatter than the other, and furnished with a raised rim. From the space within this rim projected a sort of little tapering mast about as long as the cocoon.”[[143]]