I was very glad to see the pond again. The water-gnats were taking dimensions as usual, a blue-black beetle sat humming on the stake, and dragon-flies flitted hungrily about, like splinters of a broken rainbow; but the Water-Soldier's place was empty, and it was never refilled. He was the only specimen. Molly was probably in the right when, after a last vain search for the scarlet spider, as Francis slowly emptied the pail, she said with a sigh, "What makes me so very sorry is, that I don't think we ought to have 'collected' things unless we had really attended to them, and knew how to keep them alive." FOOTNOTES: Footnote D: Water-soldier--_Stratiotes aloides._ A handsome and rare plant, of aloe-like appearance, with a white blossom rising in the centre of its sword-leaves. AMONG THE MERROWS. A SKETCH OF A GREAT AQUARIUM. I remember the time when I, and a brother who was with me, devoutly believed in a being whom we supposed to live among certain black, water-rotted, weed-grown stakes by the sea. These old wooden ruins were, I fancy, the remains of some rude pier, and amid them, when the tide was low, we used to play, and to pay fancy visits to our fancy friend. We called her Shriny--why, I know no more than when I first read Croker's delightful story of "The Soul Cages" I knew why the Merrow whom Jack went to see below the waves was called Coomara. My remembrance of even what we fancied about Shriny is very dim now; and as my brother was only four years old (I was eight), his is not more distinct. I know we thought of her, and talked of her, and were always eager to visit her supposed abode, and wander together amongst its rotten pillars (which, as we were so small, seemed lofty enough in our eyes), where the mussels and limpets held tightly on, and the slimy, olive-green fucus hung loosely down--a sea-ivy covering ruins made by the waves. I have never been to the place since those days. If Shriny's palace is there now at all, I dare say I should find the stakes to be stumps, and all the vastness and mystery about them gone for ever. And yet we used to pretend to feast with her there. We served up the seed-vessels of the fucus as fish. I do not think we really ate them, we only sucked out the salt water, and tried to fancy we were enjoying the repast. Once we _began_ to eat a limpet!--Beyond that point my memory is dumb. I wonder how we should have felt if Shriny had really appeared to us, as Coomara appeared to Jack Dogherty, and taken us down below the waves, or kept us among the stakes of her palace till the tide flooded them, and perhaps filled it with wonderful creatures and beautiful things, and floated out the dank, dripping fucus into a veil of lace above our heads; as our mother used to float out little dirty lumps of seaweed into beautiful web-like pictures when she was preserving them for her collection. Shriny never did come, though Mr. Croker says Coomara came to Jack.