“Horrid, green, oozy stuff?” repeated the cicada. “Child, you don’t know what you are talking about. That green stuff is made up of tiny green plants more than you could count. Each has a rootlet hanging down like a silver thread and leaves almost too small to be called so. They are green though and they do the mighty work of all green leaves, for, besides shading the pond world from the hot rays of the sun, they make for the many inhabitants the life-giving oxygen without which they would die. And I want to tell you something more: In that duckweed—for what you call green, oozy stuff is duckweed—there are millions of tiny living things too small to be seen by the eye except with the aid of a microscope.” Ruth looked quite as astonished as the cicada meant she should be. “You have a great deal to learn, I assure you. Maybe you haven’t thought of the pond as a world, but just see what a busy place it is.” Ruth looked and agreed with the cicada. Dragon flies were darting here, there, and everywhere; frogs, with their heads out of the water, seemed to be admiring the scenery when they were not swallowing air or whatever else came in their way; glancing minnows and bright-eyed tadpoles played amongst the swaying water weeds; even the wrigglers were there, standing on their heads in their own funny way; and the water striders, skating after their own queer fashion. Yes, it was a busy place. A party of whirligig beetles came dashing by, circling, curving, spinning, and making such a disturbance that a backswimmer lost his patience and told them to be quiet. They didn’t like that at all, so they threw about him a very disagreeable milky fluid which made the backswimmer dive for the bottom in a hurry. “That settled him,” said one of the whirligigs. “Hello! friend Skipper Jack,” he called to a water strider, “what are you doing?” “Skating, of course,” answered the water strider. “There, they are gone,” he added, to the cicada, “and I am glad of it. They are nuisances.” “You are right,” agreed the cicada. “I am glad they don’t belong to our order.” “Don’t they?” asked Ruth. “I think they are awfully funny.” “Funny or not, they are beetles,” answered the water strider. “You had better use your eyes. Do you know why I can skate and not get my feet wet? No, of course you don’t, and yet it is as plain as the nose on your face. I have a coat of hairs on the under side of my body. That’s why. I spend my time on the surface of the water, for my dinner is right here. Plenty of gnats, insect eggs, and other eatables. Then if I wish I can spring up in the air for the things that fly. My Winters I spend under water, but for other seasons give me the surface.” “And I like the bottom best,” said a water boatman, showing himself quite suddenly, his air-covered body glittering like silver armour. “Another cousin,” whispered the cicada in Ruth’s ear. “He is called the water cicada, as well as water boatman.”