Do they, then, eat these infusoria?
That is not clear. But minnows and small fry eat them by millions;
and so do tadpoles, and perhaps caddis baits and water crickets.
What are they?
Look on the soft muddy bottom. You see numberless bits of stick.
Watch awhile, and those sticks are alive, crawling and tumbling over
each other. The weed, too, is full of smaller ones. Those live
sticks are the larva-cases of the Caperers--Phryganeae--of which one
family nearly two hundred species have been already found in Great
Britain. Fish up one, and you find, amid sticks and pebbles, a
comfortable silk case, tenanted by a goodly grub. Six legs he has,
like all insects, and tufts of white horns on each ring of his
abdomen, which are his gills. A goodly pair of jaws he has too, and
does good service with them: for he is the great water scavenger.
Decaying vegetable matter is his food, and with those jaws he will
bark a dead stick as neatly as you will with a penknife. But he does
not refuse animal matter. A dead brother (his, not yours) makes a
savoury meal for him; and a party of those Vorticellae would stand a
poor chance if he came across them.
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