Page:Scouting for girls, adapted from Girl guiding.djvu/120

106 Try it yourself. It is quite easy.

Reptiles.—There is a lot of interest to be got out of watching reptiles, such as frogs, which begin as tadpoles, eating weeds, and gradually lose their tails and gills, which they begin with, and end up as frogs, eating worms and slugs as food.

Insects.—Insects, too, are very interesting little people when you get to know their ways and habits. Among them you can generally find moths, ants, gnats, butterflies, bees, beetles, ladybirds, and all such. Though most girls do not care very much about them, Scouts who have studied them get to like them, even spiders and daddylonglegs, and to take a close interest in them.

Caddis worms, for instance, build the most beautiful houses of mosaic work, all formed of tiny stones and bits of shell glued on to a silken lining which the caddis worms make themselves.

The caddis worm has extraordinary jaws which he can fold up when they are in the way, and he can also push himself along in the water by squirting out a strong jet of water all round him. A caddis worm is really only the larva of a large sort of dragon fly; so when he wants to change into a winged insect, he cleverly spins a silken door across each end of his tubular house, and fixes it on to the stalk of a plant near the water. Then he waits till his wings have grown, and at last he crawls out and runs up the plant out of the water, and flies away into the sunshine.

Butterfly-hunting is a most exciting pastime. You go out with your net and your box, and chase the pretty