We are there at last. The place could not be better for my birdlets: shallow, tepid water, interspersed with muddy knolls and green eyots. The diversions of the bath begin forthwith. The ducklings clap their beaks and rummage here, there, and everywhere. They are happy; and it is a blessed thing to see them at work. We will let them be. It is my turn to enjoy the pond. What is this? On the mud lie some loose, knotted, soot-coloured cords. One might take them for threads of wool like those which you pull out of an old ravelly stocking. Can some shepherdess, knitting a black sock and finding her work turn out badly, have begun all over again and, in her impatience, have thrown down the wool with all the dropped stitches? It really looks like it. I take up one of those cords in my hand. It is sticky and extremely slack; the thing slips through the fingers before they can catch hold of it. A few of the knots burst and shed their contents. What comes out is a black globule, the size of a pin’s head, followed by a flat tail. I recognise, on a very small scale, a familiar object: the Tadpole, the Frog’s baby. I have seen enough. Let us leave the knotted cords alone. The next creatures please me better. They spin round on the surface of the water and their black backs gleam in the sun. If I lift a hand to seize them, that moment they disappear, I know not where. It’s a pity: I should have much liked to see them closer and to make them wriggle in a little bowl which I should have put ready for them. Let us look at the bottom of the water, pulling aside those bunches of green string whence beads of air are rising and gathering into foam. There is something of everything underneath. I see pretty shells with compact whorls, flat as beans; I notice little worms carrying tufts and feathers; I make out some with flabby fins constantly flapping on their backs. What are they all doing there? What are their names? I do not know. And I stare at them for ever so long, held by the incomprehensible mystery of the waters. At the place where the pond dribbles into the adjoining field are some alder-trees; and here I make a glorious find. It is a Beetle—not a very large one, oh no! He is smaller than a cherry-stone, but of an unutterable blue. I put the glorious one inside an empty snail-shell, which I plug up with a leaf. I shall admire that living jewel at my leisure, when I get back. Other distractions summon me away.