There,
under the genial light of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged
fly emerge, to buzz over the water as a fawn-coloured Caperer--
deadliest of trout flies; if she be not snapped up beforehand under
water by some spotted monarch in search of supper.
But look again among this tangled mass of weed. Here are more larvae
of water-flies. Some have the sides fringed with what look like
paddles, but are gills. Of these one part have whisks at the tail,
and swim freely. They will change into ephemerae, cock-winged
'duns,' with long whisked tails. The larvae of the famous green
drake (Ephemera vulgata) are like these: but we shall not find them.
They are all changed by now into the perfect fly; and if not, they
burrow about the banks, and haunt the crayfish-holes, and are not
easily found.
Some, again, have the gills on their sides larger and broader, and no
whisks at the tail. These are the larvae of Sialis, the black alder,
Lord Stowell's fly, shorm fly, hunch-back of the Welsh, with which we
have caught our best fish to-day.
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