enough, I advise my
water-neighbours to be content with the pond in the wood.

The story of my brief sojourn in the Glass Pond is a story with a moral,
and it concerns two large classes of my fellow-creatures: those who live
in ponds and--those who don't. If I do not tell it, no one else will.
Those connected with it who belong to the second class (namely, Francis,
Molly, and the learned Doctor, their grandfather) will not, I am sure.
And as to the rest of us, there is none left but--

However, that is the end of my tale, not the beginning.

The beginning, as far as I am concerned, was in the Pond. It is very
difficult to describe a pond to people who cannot live under water, just
as I found it next door to impossible to make a minnow I knew believe in
dry land. He said, at last, that perhaps there might be some little
space beyond the pond in hot weather, when the water was low; and that
was the utmost that he would allow. But of all cold-blooded
unconvinceable creatures, the most obstinate are fish.

Men are very different. They do not refuse to believe what lies beyond
their personal experience. I respected the learned Doctor, and was
really sorry for the disadvantages under which he laboured. That a
creature of his intelligence should have only two eyes, and those not
even compound ones--that he should not be able to see under water or in
the dark--that he should not only have nothing like six legs, but be
quite without wings, so that he could not even fly out of his own window
for a turn in the air on a summer's evening--these drawbacks made me
quite sorry for him; for he had none of the minnow's complacent
ignorance. He knew my advantages as well as I knew them myself, and bore
me no ill-will for them.

"The _Dyticus marginalis_, or Great Water-Beetle," I have heard him say,
in the handsomest manner, "is equally at home in the air, or in the
water. Like all insects in the perfect state, it has six legs, of which
the hindmost pair are of great strength, and fringed so as to serve as
paddles. It has very powerful wings, and, with Shakespeare's witches, it
flies by night. It has two simple, and two sets of compound eyes. When
it goes below water, it carries a stock of air with it, on the
diving-bell principle; and when this is exhausted, comes to the surface,
tail uppermost, for a fresh supply. It is the most voracious of the
carnivorous water-beetles."

The last sentence is rather an unkind reflection on my g