may be some left. Yes, there's the beetle. I
shall put it all in a pail and take it back to the pond. Oh dear! oh
dear! I can't see anything of the scarlet spider. My beautiful scarlet
spider! I was so fond of him. Oh, I am so sorry! And no one has watered
the Soldier, and he's dead too."

"Don't cry, Molly! Please don't cry! I dare say the spider is there,
only it's so small."

For some time Molly poked carefully here and there, but the spider was
not to be found, and the contents of the aquarium were carried back to
the wood.

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 be