Then we shall often come across a queer creature with two oar-like feelers near the head and a double tail tipped with long hairs, while in the centre of the head is a large, shining eye,--Cyclops he is rightly called. Although so small that we can make out little of his structure without the aid of the lens, yet Cyclops is far from being related to the other still smaller beings which swim about him, many of which consist of but one cell and are popularly known as animalculæ, more correctly as Protozoans. Cyclops has a jointed body and in many other ways shows his relationship to crabs and lobsters, even though they are many times larger and live in salt water.
Another member of this group is Daphnia, although the appropriateness of this name yet remains to be discovered; Daphnia being a chunky-bodied little being, with a double-branched pair of oar-like appendages, with which he darts swiftly through the water. Although covered with a hard crust like a crab, this is so transparent that we can see right through his body. The dark mass of food in the stomach and the beating heart are perfectly distinct. Often, near the upper part of the body, several large eggs are seen in a sort of pouch, where they are kept until hatched.
So if the sea is far away and time hangs heavy, invite your friends to go sponging and crabbing in the nearest pond, and you may be certain of quieting their fears as to your sanity as well as drawing exclamations of delight from them when they see these beautiful creatures for the first time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our sense of smell is not so keen as that of a dog, who can detect the tiny quail while they are still invisible; nor have we the piercing sight of the eagle who spies the grouse crouching hundreds of feet beneath his circling flight; but when we walk through the bare December woods there is unfolded at last to our eyes evidence of the late presence of our summer's feathered friends--air castles and tree castles of varied patterns and delicate workmanship.
Did it ever occur to you to think what the first nest was like--what home the first reptile-like scale flutterers chose? Far back before Jurassic times, millions of years ago, before the coming of bony fishes, when the only mammals were tiny nameless creatures, hardly larger than mice; when the great Altantosaurus dinosaurs browsed on the quaint herbage, and Pterodactyls--those ravenous bat-winged dragons of the air--hovered above the surface of the earth,--in this epoch we can imagine a pair of long-tailed, half-winged creatures which skimmed from tree to tree, perhaps giving an occasional flop--the beginning of the marvellous flight motions. Is it not likely that the Teleosaurs who watched hungrily from the swamps saw them disappear at last in a hollowed cavity beneath a rotten knothole? Here, perhaps, the soft-shelled, lizard-like eggs were laid, and when they gave forth the ugly creaturelings did not Father Creature flop to the topmost branch and utter a gurgling cough, a most unpleasant grating sound, but grand in its significance, as the opening chord in the symphony of the ages to follow?--until now the mockingbird and the nightingale hold us spellbound by the wonder of their minstrelsy.